POST 147 LEGION BASEBALL - Medford Legion opens with 9-3 win at Rapids
POST 147 LEGION BASEBALL
Four runs in the second inning would’ve been enough but four more in the seventh certainly put win number one in the bank Monday night for Medford’s Post 147 American Legion baseball team.
Medford downed host Wisconsin Rapids 9-3 in the season opener for both squads, outhitting the Rangers 11-8 and building a 9-1 lead until Braden Lewis hit a two-run double with two outs in the bottom of the seventh.
Three pitchers combined to get the job done for Medford. Tanner Hraby covered the first three innings, allowing just one hit. Carson Carbaugh allowed a run on a fourth-inning balk but otherwise worked around three hits and two walks in two innings. Nick Steliga got a strikeout and walked one while allowing four hits and two runs in his two innings.
Hraby went three for four with a walk at the plate and drove in two runs, while Blake Bargender, one of Post 147’s additions to the roster from Abbotsford this summer, went two for three with two RBIs and a walk. Carbaugh also had two hits in the win.
Bargender’s RBI single drove in Hraby with the game’s first run in the opening inning. Post 147 struck big in the second against left-handed Braden Lewis, a 2023 Rapids grad who pitched this spring for Carroll University. Carbaugh led off with a single and Steliga reached on a one-out error. Carbaugh scored on Hraby’s groundout. After JV Castillo walked, Braxton Weissmiller, Bargender and Parker Lissner hit consecutive RBI singles for a 5-0 lead.
In the seventh, one-out walks to Bargender and Lissner set the table for another big inning. Payton Schreiber singled in Bargender. With the bases loaded, a throwing error on a grounder hit by Steliga brought two runs in and Hraby capped Medford’s scoring with a two-out RBI single.
Lewis went just two innings for the Rangers, allowing four earned runs and six hits while walking one. Caleb Orheim pitched four scoreless innings, allowing just two hits and one walk while striking out two. The seventhinning damage was done against Josh Dekarske, who allowed four runs, though just one was earned, on three hits and walked two in two-thirds of an inning.
Canon Plawman and Gage Honeyager had two hits apiece for Rapids.
Medford was scheduled to host Chippewa Falls at Whittlesey Wednesday for a nine-inning contest. Post 147 welcomes Tomahawk for a pair of five-inning games Monday. That starts at 6 p.m.
