Brown, offense helps Saxony take down East Prairie

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Saxony Lutheran baseball coach Paul Sander was “concerned” with his team’s ability to get timely situational hits, and just the offense overall in the first four games of the season.
Sander’s concerns should be calmed after Wednesday.
Saxony Lutheran junior led the way with four hits, while Wilson Lodge and Will LeDure added three apiece on the way to smashing 13 hits total as Saxony took down East Prairie 12-2 in six innings on March 31.
“We finally hit the ball,” Sander said. “We played four games up to this point and we really didn’t get the bats going, It’s good to finally know that we can do it.”
Sander was more concerned about his team’s ability to hit in run producing situations and Lodge squashed that worry right from the start.
Hamilton singled to begin the game, while Tanner King walks and Zac Lewis reached base after being hit by the pitch to load the bases. Lodge came through with a single with two outs that gave Saxony the early 2-0 lead.
Lodge drove in another run in the third inning to give Saxony a 3-0 lead.
“Our situational hitting was much better today,” Sander said. “We tended to strike out when there were runners on base. Today we came trough with some big hits with runners on and that should give us confidence moving forward.
That was all Saxony starting pitcher Eli Brown would need.
One start after striking out 20 Bloomfield batters, Brown flowed up with another strong outing.
Brown went 5 1/3 innings, allowed two hits, one run (0 earned), with 10 strikeouts.
At times Brown looked unhittable, as he struck out five of the first six batters.
“Eli is such a great pitcher,” Sander said. “He had an outstanding outing that about 99 percent of people in Southeast Missouri would love to have and he’s a little aggravated about it.”
East Prairie got on the board in the fourth inning after a couple of errors allowed the Eagles to narrow the margin to 3-1.

Saxony left no doubt about the outcome in the bottom half of the inning.
Hamilton kicked off the inning with a triple and came around the score on a ground ball by Tanner King, who reached base five times in the game, reached on a error.
LeDure drove a ball to right field for a single, which the fielder had trouble staying in front of, and scored King, and Lewis drove in LeDure with an RBI single as well to widen the Saxony lead to 6-1.
LeDure and Jace Boland had RBI singles in the sixth inning to officially end the contest.
Saxony will take on Delta in the first round of the Oak Ridge tournament today at 4:45 p.m. at Saxony Lutheran High School. The tournament takes place in the midst of a stretch of home games Saxony will take part in until April 15. Saxony is at home for two of the games during the tournament.
The championship game will be played at Oak Ridge on Saturday.
Excluding that title game, Saxony has played 10 games straight on home turf.
“That’s just the way the schedule fell, but we plan on taking full advantage of it,” Sander said. “We enjoy playing here. We haven’t lost at home in over two years, I hope I didn’t just jinx us.”
Saxony 15, Zalma 0
The Crusaders jumped out early as they scored 12 runs in the first inning to walk away with the lopsided victory in three innings. Hunter Hamilton, Colin Tarry, and Jacob Johnson each went 2-2 on the day. Johnson drove in four runs to lead the Crusaders. Tanner was near perfect with no hits allowed and eight strikeouts and one walk.

Saxony 15, Risco 0
The Crusaders kept the offense rolling Tuesday as they scored 12 runs in the second inning to roll by the Tigers in three innings.
The Crusaders scored two runs in the first inning and another in the third for the victory
Hunter Hamilton led the way for the Crusaders at the plate going 2-3 with three RBI and two runs scored. Colin Tarry went 2-3 with three runs scored. Tanner King also was on the basepaths scoring three runs himself.
Will LeDure pitched a perfect three innings with no hits and no runs allowed striking out eight.