County League
Mill Run’s bats pave way for 8-3 win over Connellsville MILL RUN – Bugs Orndorff just reminded his players of one of the oldest basic rules in winning baseball, and it paid off.
“We had our bats today,” Orndorff said. “You have to hit the ball to score runs, that’s baseball. Today we had our bats.”
Mill Run collected 10 hits off two pitchers, with six in the fifth when the home team scored five runs on the way to an 8-3 win over Connellsville in Fayette County Baseball League Tuesday.
Todd Bell pitched the first six innings for Mill Run, with Dale Eutsey taking over in the seventh. Together, they gave up six hits, including a home run and single by Andy Buchta and a triple and single by Brian Boyle.
Bell was tough in his best effort of the season, ceding five of the Warrior hits, while walking only one batter, Bob Keslar in the first inning, and striking out eight. At one stretch, Bell had 11 putouts in a row, before the string broken when Buchta singled to start the fifth. Other than center fielder Richie Orndorff, the rest of the Miller’s outfield could have taken the night off. Orndorff had his team’s only outfield putout in the game, a fly ball by Keslar to end the sixth.
Overall, the Mill Run defense had 10 strikeouts, nine outs to first base, a pop to the mound and the one outfield fly.
Orndorff added, “Todd pitched a fine game; he made them hit the ball on the ground, and the defense made the plays behind him. We had to juggle our infield a little bit, we were missing one regular (ss Jeremy Miller), but we had great defense behind our pitching.”
Connellsville manager Len Kolencik was disappointed in losing the game, but even moreso in “our team not hitting tonight like we have been. There were three innings today when we had runners to second and third but couldn’t get the hit to being them in. We did get out to an early lead, but you never have enough runs against Mill Run. They are always going to be hitting the ball and some of those hits will be long ones. Chris Lewis pitched well for us until the fifth when he just got a little tired and they got to him.”
The Orndorff brothers led the winning offense, Richie with a home run, triple and three RBI and Ray a triple. Plus Mike Doppelheuer had a home run and Kris Firestone a pair of singles.
Connellsville (4-3-1) led 2-0 in the first. Brian Sass singled to lead off the game, and with one out, Boyle tripled him in and scored on Ray Ansell’s single.
Mill Run (3-3-1) got one in its first on a leadoff single by Dennis Show, who moved around on a passed ball, a wild pitch and Doppelheuer’s groundout. They took the lead for good in the second, 3-1, on Firestone’s single and triples by the Orndorffs.
Five runs in the fifth iced the game for Mill Run. With two out, Doppelheuer homered past the swings in left-center, John Warrick, Firestone, and Jim Warrick singled and Richie Orndorff homered to deep left-center.
Connellsville closed its scoring in the seventh with Buchta’s long leadoff homer to deep right-center.
Orndorff said, “I think one of our hitting problems might have been that many of our players didn’t play any spring ball; they didn’t play until this season started. Now they look like they have made the adjustment to batting, and maybe we are starting to hit like we know how. We will find out when we play at Fayette City on Thursday and at Charleroi on Sunday.”
Kolencik added, “I think a big point for us now is that we are more focused on our game this year. Last year there were times when we were happy to just to be in the game, but this year we have a more positive outlook toward winning. We come into a game now expecting to win and we are disappointed when we don’t.”
The Warriors are home for two weekend games, with Brownsville on Saturday and Carmichaels on Sunday, both at 1 p.m. at the field adjacent to Laurel Highlands High School.