POST 147 LEGION BASEBALL - Stratford walks off Post 147 twice; Medford rolls at CF

POST 147 LEGION BASEBALL

Multiple rallies failed to reach their potential and it cost Medford’s Post 147 Senior Legion baseball team Tuesday in a pair of walk-off losses at Stratford.

Stratford took the first five-inning contest 2-1 on Jack Tubbs’ RBI single, which capped a rally that started with two outs and no one on. Vance Kielman’s runscoring hit ended a 3-2 win for the home team in game two.

The defeats put Post 147 at 4-5 for the summer season, which is approaching its home stretch with the post season starting in just two weeks with Class AA regional play in Merrill.

Double plays got Stratford out of trouble in the second and third innings of game one. Medford did score a run in the third inning when Broden Schilling and Tanner Hraby singled and Parker Lissner walked to load the bases with no outs. Stratford pitcher Brady Schmidt got JV Castillo on strikes. A run scored on Payton Schreiber’s fielder’s choice before Schmidt got Max Dietzman to bounce into a 6-4-3 double play.

Medford had two runners on with one out in the fourth and didn’t score. Stratford tied the game in the bottom half as Brady Berg walked, went to third on Henry Zaleski’s single and scored on a double-play ball hit to Hraby at shortstop by Kielman.

After Medford stranded a runner at second in the top of the fifth, Stratford struck with two outs in the bottom half with consecutive singles by Alec Chapel, Riley Spindler and Tubbs to win it.

Nick Steliga went 4.2 innings for Medford, allowing two runs and just two hits before Stratford got the three straight hits to win it. He struck out four and walked one. Schmidt struck out five, walked one and allowed seven hits while getting the win. Lissner had two hits for Medford.

Post 147 took a quick 2-0 lead in the first inning of game two but, again, it could have been a bigger inning. Castillo yanked a leadoff home run over the fence in leftfield. That was followed by an infield hit by Lissner, Hraby’s double and a bloop single by Blake Bargender that made it 20. A stolen base put runners at second and third, but Zaleski got out of the jam with a pop-up, a strikeout and a groundout.

Stratford got an unearned run in the first against Medford starter Carson Carbaugh. The hosts tied it in the third on a Zaleski sacrifice fly. Castillo took over on the mound and pitched a scoreless fourth and retired Tubbs on a fly ball to start the fifth, but Berg singled, Zaleski blooped a single behind first base and a throwing error put Berg on third. He scored on Kielman’s line-drive hit to left.

Post 147 had just one hit after the first inning, a Bargender single in the third. A double play killed a twoon, one-out threat in that inning.

Medford will play four games at this weekend’s Antigo Mid-Summer Tournament. The first three are in pool play. Medford faces Norway, Mich. at 1 p.m. on Friday, D.C. Everest at noon on Saturday and Fond du Lac at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday. Sunday’s crossover game will be determined by pool placement with game times set for 9 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 2 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. Antigo, Germantown, Gladstone, Mich. and Superior are in the other pool. All ofMedford’s games will take place at Kretz Park with the exception of the D.C. Everest game, which will be played at the high school field.

Medford is at Rhinelander for a 7 p.m. game on Wednesday.

Medford 7, Post 77 1

In the team’s most complete game of the season, Post 147 got a complete game three-hitter fromCastillo and broke a 1-1 tie with a four-run fourth-inning rally en route to a 7-1 win at Chippewa Falls Post 77.

Originally scheduled to be a doubleheader, the teams played just one game on a soggy evening.

Medford avenged a 6-4 loss from earlier in the season, outhitting the home team 11-3. Castillo walked five and struck out three while allowing just one unearned run in the first inning.

Schreiber led the offense, going three for four with an RBI and Jack Wojcik had two hits and three RBIs out of the eighth spot in the batting order.

Schreiber’s RBI came in the top of the first with a two-out single down the leftfield line that scored Castillo, who had singled and stolen second.

Post 77 tied it in the bottom half of the inning thanks to a two-out throwing error, but that would be it for Chippewa Falls as far as offensive production goes.

Post 147’s big fourth inning rally started with Schreiber’s single of Post 77 starter Lucas Logslett. Logslett fielded a bouncer by Dietzman, but his throw to second was wide for an error. Schreiber went to third base on Bargender’s fly ball to right. Steliga’s fly ball to right was dropped, allowing Schreiber to score the go-ahead run. Wojcik’s single scored Dietzman and Sam Hierlmeier pulled a single to left to load the bases.

Hraby greeted reliever Carter Berg with an RBI single and Lissner lifted a sacrifice fly to left to score Wojcik and make it 5-1.

Wojcik’s two-out single in the fifth scored Schreiber and Bargender, who had also singled off Berg. Wojcik made a nice sliding catch in centerfield to end the sixth inning and strand two runners.

Only one of the five runs Logslett was charged with was earned, but he took the loss, allowing six hits and a walk in 3.1 innings. Berg allowed four hits and two earned runs in 1.2 innings, while Jackson Gugel pitched the last two innings for the home team, striking out two and allowing a hit and a walk.

Chippewa Falls beat Medford 6-4 earlier in the season.