Chicks fall to Pirates in baseball

Ace Matt Wierzbicki kept Blytheville in the game with his bat and his arm, but neighbor rival Gosnell left the Blytheville Youth Sportsplex with a 5-3 win, Friday afternoon.

Wierzbicki homered and pitched all seven innings in the loss, allowing three earned runs on five hits and three walks while fanning four Pirates.

His counterpart, Matt Robinson, Gosnell's No. 4 pitcher, earned the win, allowing two runs (one earned) on three hits, a walk and three hit batsmen, while striking out four in four innings.

Austin Davis got the save, tossing the final three innings. He allowed only the Wierzbicki home run to lead off the sixth and struck out six Chickasaws. Wierzbicki's blast to left answered Zach Perrin's two-out, solo shot to dead center in the third inning.

"We had a kid who started the game, doesn't have any experience. I think he did a great job for four innings, kept them off balance," Gosnell head coach Bret Jackson said. "Then Austin showed a lot of guts. He threw 60 pitches last night (against conference foe Brookland). I'm sure his arm was a little sore and he came in there and competed and battled hard and threw strikes and closed the door on them."

"The thing I liked today is we saw a pretty good pitcher; he threw fairly hard and we did a good job of adjusting at the plate with a short, compact stroke," Jackson added. "We hit several balls extremely hard today. We hit when we had runners in scoring position. Our bunt game was pretty good and I thought our base running, overall, was pretty good. I'm pleased with what I saw last night and today and hopefully we can keep building off of that.If we do we'll be in good shape. I'm just tickled to get a win."

Blytheville head coach Brett Kirk believes defensive miscues prevented Wierzbicki from getting the victory. The Chicks had three errors that cost them two runs.

"Matt pitched a heckuva game," Kirk said. "A lot of routine stuff out there with balls that we missed, a little pop up there in the infield. Those things can't happen. Unfortunately they did. Like I told the kids afterwards, you learn from your mistakes and make sure they don't happen again. We try not to let them get too down on themselves. Those kind of things make it hard on a pitcher when he throws a game like he did against a pretty good Gosnell team. Coach Jackson does a good job with those guys. We can't have those errors on routine plays. You take those errors out of the game and it's a different ball game -- they're probably the ones batting in the top of the seventh, trying to come back and win."

Kirk was referring to Davis' pop up between third and short to lead off the fifth inning. There was confusion among the infielders and the ball dropped to the ground, instead of finding a Chickasaw's glove. Davis took advantage of the break, moving to second on the play, then to third on Ricky Gable's sacrifice bunt. Davis scored on a wild pitch, making it 4-1 Gosnell. Wierzbicki then recorded back-to-back outs to get out of the inning.

Blytheville got the run back in its half of the fifth. Keon Wilkerson roped a double to left and scored on Jay Bullard's ground out to second to make it 4-2.

Gosnell (2-4) countered with a run in the sixth as Jay Chandler plated Jake Westmoreland with a one-out sacrifice fly to left, giving the Pirates a 5-2 advantage.

Wierzbicki answered by starting the bottom of the sixth with a home run to left off closer Davis, who struckout the next three batters to keep it 5-3.

"We're getting better," Kirk said. "The biggest thing for us is the defensive aspect because we've literally only been out here on the field four times (because of the wet field). That does have a little play with the defense. The kids are trying; I'm not going to fault them for that. We've just got to make these routine plays and no mental errors and we're going to be successful and win ball games."

Jackson also sees improvement with his club.

"We had a doubleheader conference game yesterday (at Brookland)," the veteran Pirate coach said. "We played terrible the first game, barely pulled it out. We did get a win. But I was very disappointed in the way we played that first game yesterday. Then we came back in the nightcap and we played good baseball. We've been inconsistent this year.We'll play one game where we can play with anybody and then the next game we fall off mentally and lose our focus. I think we get overconfident. We've put together two games in a row where we've looked halfway decent and I hope we can build off of that. Like I told these kids, we've got a chance to be a good baseball team if we can just get more consistent..I was pleased with the way we played today."

Gosnell got on the scoreboard first with two runs in the second inning.

Brice Smith doubled in Cody Johnson (pinch running for Blake Sullivan) and his pinch runner scored on a Blytheville error to make it 2-0. Perrin made it 3-0 with a two-out blast to center in the third. Blytheville got on the scoreboard in the fourth, when Anfernee Coleman (courtesy running for Wierzbicki) scored on a throwing error to make it 3-1. The Chicks couldn't close the gap any further, however.

Wierzbicki was 1-for-1 with two runs and the home run to lead Blytheville at the plate. Bruce Harlan was 1-for-1 and Ke'Andre Diamond and Keon Wilkerson 1-for-3 each for the Chicks.

Brice Smith led the Pirate sticks, going 3-for-3 with two doubles and an RBI. Perrin and Ethan Ballard were 1-for-3 each in the win.