The Bulldogs’ pursuit of their first league baseball win of the season continues as Creswell fell 9-1 to visiting La Pine on April 22 and 5-3 to visiting Pleasant Hill on April 24.
The Bulldogs (0-6) have been hampered, head coach Tyler Main said, by the strength of their league, with three of five teams ranked among the top 10 state 3A.
”Sometimes the score of a game doesn’t always tell the full story,” Main said. ”We’ve played hard and pretty well against some pretty tough teams.”
Third-ranked La Pine, ranked first at the time of the game, came out swinging, and while the Dawgs fielded well, committing only two errors, ”they just came out and hit the ball,” Main said. ”We did what we could do, but they were able to keep players in scoring position and drive them in and we just didn’t have our bats going for us in that game.”
Gio Mediati started on the mound for Creswell, giving up four runs on eight hits, striking out one and walking two. While this was not the freshman’s best outing, ”he’s usually pretty good at being efficient with his pitches,” Main said.
Dallton Dewey pitched the final three innings, giving up five runs on four hits, striking out three, walking four and hitting one.
Mediati went 1-for-3 with an RBI, Dawson Sharkey went 1-for-3 and scored, and Avery Wells went 1-for-3.
”This was one of the few games where we’ve truly been beaten; in other games we beat ourselves,” Main said. ”We’re getting there – we’ve just got to get over the hump.”
Against third-ranked Pleasant Hill (now No. 4), the Bulldogs played ”probably our best overall game the full seven innings,” Main said. ”We had just a couple of errors that made the difference – dropped balls in the outfield that let them put the ball in play and we weren’t able to capitalize and keep them under wraps.”
Dean Howard reached his full count limit of 110 pitches in six and one-third innings, giving up five runs (only one earned) on four hits, striking out eight and walking two.
Dewey pitched the final two-thirds inning, striking out one.
Levi Bones went 1-for-4 with a double and two RBIs. Wells and Dewey each went 2-for-4 and scored; Howard went 1-for-3 and scored; and Nick Kubishta went 1-for-3.
The Dawgs meet two more tough opponents this week in second-ranked Santiam Christian and 14th-ranked Harrisburg.
”It’s a big week for us, and we’ll be missing four starters, but we at least need to split this week for sure,” Main said. ”So far, we’ve had our fielding going but not our bats, or our bats are going but we’ve had fielding errors. We haven’t put it all together yet, so hopefully we can do that this week and get a couple of wins and keep our season alive. If we can do that, given the strength of our league, we should still be able to get that at-large bid to state.”
