By RICK SPRUNGER
HARTFORD CITY — Bluffton made a quick exit from the Class 2A sectional tournament at Blackford Saturday afternoon.
A surprisingly quick exit.
The Tigers, taking a record of 18-6 into the tournament and six wins in their last seven games, ran into a buzzsaw in Fort Wayne Luers and went down 12-0.
Although the game wasn’t officially over until Bluffton completed its turn at bat in the fifth inning, the handwriting was on the wall when the Tigers found themselves trailing, 6-0, before they even came to bat.
“No offense to Adams Central,” said Bluffton coach Jason Pierce in reference to Luers’ Monday opponent in the championship game, “but I think you’ll see them in the state finals. “That’s a (darned) good team over there.”
Luers made quick work of Bluffton pitcher Braxton Betancourt in the top of the first inning.
Betancourt came into the contest with a tiny 1.00 earned run average.
But Luers greeted the Tiger ace with five straight hits to start the game.
“(Luers’) approach was spot-on,” commented Pierce on a nightmarish first inning that included three walks and a well-tagged fly ball that drove in the Knights’ sixth run in the inning. They knew he would be throwing lots of off-speed pitches, and they were patient and put their bats on fastballs. And they were slapping balls to the opposite field.”
Betancourt came out after just one inning, but Luers went to work on the Bluffton bullpen as well.
“We didn’t command the strike zone,” added Pierce. “We didn’t necessarily walk all that many batters [three in the last four innings], but we were pitching from behind in the count.”
A two-run home run by John Bloom upped the count to 8-0 in the second inning, the Knights got another marker in the third on a walk, two stolen bases, and a balk; and the final three came home an inning later on a rocket over the left field fence by Isaac Zay with two runners aboard.
Those two homers were the first of the season for both players.
Bloom also had a run-scoring single and scored himself in that first-inning uprising, and he added a leadoff double and scored ahead of Zay’s homer in the fourth for a three-hit afternoon.
Brayden McInturf also had two hits but, interestingly was the only Luers player other than Bloom to have more than one in the Knights’ 12-hit attack.
As for Zay, he was as tough on the mound as he was at the plate.
The junior pitcher came into the game with a 4-0 record and a 1.35 earned run average but pitched a one-hit shutout against the hard-hitting Tigers, something that did not necessarily please Pierce.
“I’ll put our .349 team batting average up against a pitcher who throws 84 [mph] and who is throwing ninety percent fastballs any day of the week,” said Pierce flatly. “I don’t know if being down 6-0 before we ever came to bat had something to do with it. It might have, but we never recovered from that. There are two approaches to (being down early), and one is to take a strike at the plate. But you just can’t do that against this guy; his strikeout-to-walk ratio is too high. We just failed to be aggressive against a pitcher who was always around the zone.”
Zay retired the first seven batters he faced before issuing a couple of walks in the third.
He finished with eight strikeouts in five innings of work and yielded only a leadoff double to A.J. Streveler in the fifth.
So the Tigers close the books on a fine 18-7 season, albeit one with a disappointing finish.
Luers, meanwhile, improved its record to 21-8 with its ninth consecutive victory and moved on to the sectional championship game against Adams Central (17-8), a 10-7 winner over South Adams in the other semi-final.
Luers defeated the Jets, 9-6, on May 8.
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