State-ranked Pella eliminates Newton baseball with one big inning

The Newton baseball team had a lot of new faces at the varsity level this season. But many of those players have started at least 18 games this summer.

So at this point in the season, it’s hard for head coach Derek Wrage to use inexperience as an excuse. Or a reason the team comes up short in certain aspects of the game.

The Cardinals led Class 3A No. 9 Pella through three innings on Friday, but couldn’t avoid that one bad inning that has plagued them a lot this season. And a three-run fourth is all the host Dutch needed during a 3-1 victory in the 3A Substate 7 opener.

“I have said a lot that we have young kids and are trying to learn how to win, but at this point in the season there’s no such thing as freshmen and freshmen mistakes,” Wrage said. “They’ve played 25 games now.”

Newton committed two errors in the season-ending loss and one of the three runs Pella scored was unearned.

But the Cardinals mostly had trouble fielding bunts and finding a way to get outs on soft contact in the deciding fourth frame.

“It just comes down to having trust in the preparation. All of that stuff came on bunts or soft contact,” Wrage said. “They didn’t hit the ball hard.

“Part of this is that we are young and maybe part of it’s on me because it’s been happening all year, but we have to be prepared for what’s going to happen on every pitch. You can’t expect a ball to be perfectly hit to you.”

The Cardinals (10-22) scored first. And needed less than five pitches from Pella starting pitcher Teagan Hoekstra to do so.

Skyler Milheiser smoked the first pitch he saw down the third-base line for a double. He went to third on a fly ball to deep left field by Eli Stewart and then scored on a sacrifice fly to right by Cade Bauer. It was Bauer’s team-most 19th RBI this season.

Unfortunately, Newton managed just three hits the rest of the way and Hoekstra faced the minimum three batters in three of the Cardinals’ final six at-bats.

Derek Wermager opened the second inning with a single. He moved to second on John Frietsch’s sacrifice bunt but was thrown out trying to steal third.

Braelyn Parks reached on a one-out error in the third, but Hoekstra got out of the inning with a fielder’s choice ground ball and a pop out to shortstop.

Bauer collected a lead-off single in the third and Mason Mendez reached on another Dutch error. The inning ended with Bauer standing on third base though as Mendez was retired on a fielder’s choice before Hoekstra got an inning-ending double play.

Newton went down in order in the fifth. The final at-bat of Stewart’s prep career ended with a one-out single in the sixth and then Bauer was hit by a pitch. But back-to-back fielder’s choice ground balls ended the threat.

Frietsch reached on an error to lead off the seventh, but the game eventually ended on another double play.

“He found another gear when it got to the second and third time through the order,” Wrage said about Hoekstra. “He was throwing it harder late than he did early. I think he started to show more. That’s what we try to teach our pitching staff. We can’t show everything so early. That way you still have to something to show later on.”

Finn Martin started on the mound for the Cardinals and gave his team a chance.

Pella (25-9) came into the contest averaging more than eight runs per game, but the Cardinal sophomore limited the Dutch to six hits. Four of those came in the three-run fourth and three of those didn’t leave the infield.

Hoekstra and Lucas Jablonski opened the third with back-to-back infield singles and then a throwing error on a bunt by Nathan VandeLune brought the first two runs in.

Landyn Bethards followed with a bunt single and Anderson Schirm also had a bloop single to right. The other run came on a sacrifice fly to center by Samuel Carlson.

Martin (5-4) tossed all six innings and allowed three runs — two earned — on six hits, two walks and one hit batter. He struck out two and finished the season with an earned run average of 1.29.

“There will be plenty of slow rollers that you have to just go and attack,” Wrage said. “It bit us in the butt today because they scored three runs and we weren’t able to overcome it.”

The Dutch defeated Newton four times this season and have won 10 straight in the series. Pella outscored the Cardinals 22-3 this summer.

The left-handed Hoekstra (8-2) tossed all seven innings and surrendered one earned run on four hits and one hit batter. He fanned two.

“That’s part of being someone who can throw three or four pitches for strikes,” Wrage said about Hoekstra. “That’s what he was doing later in the game. That makes it so much harder. Hats off to him. He’s only a sophomore and will be tough for two more years.”

Milheiser doubled and scored Newton’s lone run and Bauer had one hit and one RBI and was hit by one pitch to lead the offense.

Stewart and Wermager had the other hits. The bottom four batters in the Newton lineup went a combined 0-for-10.

Pella’s lower half of the order produced five of the team’s six hits and all three runs.

Milheiser and Stewart finished as the team leaders in both hits (25) and total bases (37) and Milheiser tallied a team-most five doubles and 21 steals this summer. The junior catcher also set a new school record by throwing out 17 base runners. Taylor Field had the previous record of 16.

“He’s our leader on the team. When things go bad, he pulls us back in,” Wrage said about Milheiser. “He makes our pitching staff look so much better because he’s able to hold runners closer. Teams don’t want to steal against us. That alone makes us better.

“He’s asked to do a lot. He’s caught every single varsity inning and ended up as our lead-off guy. He led our team in stolen bases. And I think he has the most hits on the team. He works hard to make himself better and makes everyone else around him better. I’m really proud of him.”

Notes: The Cardinals will lose Stewart, Parks and Rory Rohrdanz to graduation. “It’s been really cool to watch them grow up from when I had them in seventh grade football to now,” Wrage said. “Watching these kids grow into young men and take those lessons from baseball and school and other things and go on to be successful in whatever they do and be great sons, brothers and maybe eventually fathers and husbands. Hopefully we see them around at the field next summer.” ... A smaller senior class means nine players who started at least 13 games can return next season. “That’s the one beauty of a small senior class. We will have a lot of innings returning next year,” Wrage said. “We need to go into the offseason and next season thinking we are not promised anything. We still have to work our butts off and have to be better than this when we come back. We have to be better, train our bodies and get bigger and stronger. We simply have to play more baseball games and get smarter so the little things become more second nature as opposed to being told by someone all the time.”