Demons Suffer Pair of Losses in Opener with Hays

Dodge City, KS (westernkansasnews.com) The Zach Shipley era at Dodge City High School did not begin the way everyone had hoped. Shipley’s baseball started out the season with state ranked and defending conference champion Hays who already had four games under their belt. The Indians took both games 15-2 in a run rule shortened five innings and 7-5.

Game One Highlights

In game one, Brandon Roy made his debut for the Red Demons on the mound and was able to wiggle out of a first inning jam when Hays Designated Hitter Braydon Delzeit hit into an inning ending double play with the bases loaded. The second inning did not go quite as well for Roy allowing five runs on five hits. A double steal of second and home brought in the first run Jared Haynes and catcher Connor Rule capped off the scoring with a two run single making it 5-0.

Hays sent 13 batters to the plate in the third. Roy’s leadoff walk forced him out of the game. Alec Koehn came in relief and allowed eight straight to reach. Shortstop Drew Young had a two run double and back-to-back hit batters opened the floodgates six more to score lengthening Hays lead to 13-0. Ty Wallace took over on the mound for Dodge City and performed well giving up two unearned runs over three innings the rest of the way.

Emboldened with such offensive support Marcus Altman shutdown the Red Demon offense. Dodge did get a hit in the fourth on Bryce Unruh’s single. He came to third on a throwing error from Young at short in failing to get a force out at second off Gideon Wells groundball and then Luke Royle smashed a double to left center for the first Dodge City run.

Red Demons added another score in the final inning when Ty Wallace started the inning with a leadoff single and was singled to third by Eric Reid. Wallace then scored on Dayton McGroarty’s fielder choice.

Game Two Highlights

For all the time Dodge City waited to get a hit in the first game, Eric Reid took care of it in the bottom of the first starting off game two with a leadoff double to right off Hays righthander Cole Schmaucher. Reid eventually scored on a 4-3 double play hit into by Bryce Unruh, but the Red Demons were able to enjoy their first lead of the day.

Hays answered back immediately in the second with Jarrett Pfannenstiel’s RBI single off Unruh tying the game at one.

For Dodge the one bright spot of game two is they held the lead all the way until the very end. In the third the Red Demons jumped out to their biggest inning of the season at three runs. Three straight batters produced runs from the 3,4,5 spots in the lineup. Unruh had a Sac-Fly, Wells and Royle both knocked in runs with singles. The only other run Dodge City would have the rest of the game was Gideon Wells single bringing in Unruh to give the Red Demons a 5-3 lead.

Errors proved costly for the Red Demons. Two separate two error innings were a huge turning point. With Connor Rule on at second in the fourth inning and up by three, Unruh made a throwing error in front of the first base bag to get Dalton Stout on board. Then as the catcher Wells threw wildly to second in an attempt to get out Rule, no one up the middle covered the throw. Jared Haynes single brought in Rule to make it 4-2 Dodge. Stout was left at third when Pfannenstiel hit a comeback to the mound starting a 1-6-3 inning ending double play.

The two errors in the sixth inning proved to be even more costly. With one out and runners at first and third, Pfannenstiel doubled in Stout. Drew Young then hit a grounder to the Demon second baseman Eric Reid. Reid who was drawn in for a play at plate threw wildly to second plating Haynes with the tying run. The go ahead run scored one batter later when Hays rightfielder Jace Armstrong executed a safety squeeze back to Unruh who hop off the mound and booted the ball. Schmacher added a Sac-Fly one batter later to end the four run inning.

Schmacher retired the last seven batters he faced and Hays won both their conference openers.

DCHS Zach Shipley Post-game Comments

Dodge City will look to rebound Friday when the Red Demons travel to play at a tournament from Wichita South.