The Great Bend Braves got the 2012 American Legion A Baseball season started right, sweeping Hays on Friday night at the City of Great Bend Sports Complex.
On the back of pitcher Lance Ward, the Braves finished Game 1 in four innings, 9-1, and then they jumped ahead 8-0 after one inning in the second game to win 15-9 in six. The run-rule went into effect in both games.
“The kids played real well for the first game out,” Braves first-year head coach Jordan Metro said. “A lot of these kids haven’t really played together before. Some of them were JV and others were on the freshman team. I was really pleased with both games.”
Ward pitched all four innings of the first game, giving up one hit and one walk. He struck out 11 batters for the Braves.
“That first game went very well,” Metro said. “Lance just dominated. He controlled the game all by himself. He had his pitches working well, especially his off-speed pitch.”
After one inning, the game was tied at 1-1, but a three-run blast from Tristan Hall fueled a four-run second inning for the Braves, giving them a 5-1 lead.
Hall went 3-for-3 in the game with his homer, along with a double and a single.
Dillon Reiser finished 2-for-2 with a pair of doubles and a sacrifice fly.
The Braves scored four more runs in the fourth inning to close the game out with the eight-run rule.
“We were aggressive at the plate,” Metro said. “We had solid fielding. The game actually went a lot better than I expected.”
Great Bend scored eight runs in the first inning of Game 2, making the most of sporadic pitching from Hays.
Reiser drove in Great Bend’s first run with a single after Mitch Johnson led off with a walk.
Reiser cruised around the bases and scored on wild pitches from Hays’ Jake Bieker.
Lance Ward had an RBI double, and Reiser, at the plate for the second time in the inning, had another RBI single.
However, most of Great Bend’s runs scored on errors, giving the Braves an 8-0 advantage heading into the second inning.
“Their pitcher struggled a lot,” Metro said. “We got a lot of easy bases, and we were able to do something with those. We kind of got too relaxed. We took the foot off the accelerator a little bit, and let them start to get back into it.”
Hays attempted to rally in the fourth inning, taking advantage of some of Great Bend’s five errors in the game to score five runs, narrowing the gap to 12-7, but the Braves were able to get out of the inning and close out the game.
“When you’re just starting out, and you haven’t played together much, you expect some errors like that,” said Metro, who is starting his first season as the Braves’ head coach. “You could tell we got a big lead, and let up a bit.”
The Braves travel to Pratt on Monday for a doubleheader, beginning at 6 p.m.

AMERICAN LEGION A BASEBALL

At Great Bend
City of Great Bend Sports Complex

Friday

Game 1
Great Bend 9, Hays 1
               123  4         R     H     E
Hays       100  0  —    1     1     0
Braves    140  4  —    9    12    1
     Tathan Burkhart & Hayden Kreutzer; Lance Ward & Jack Westhoff. W — Ward (1-0); L — Burkhart. 2B — Great Bend: Tristan Hall; Dillon Reiser (2). HR — Great Bend: Hall.

Game 2
Great Bend 15, Hays 9
               123  456          R      H     E
Hays       002  502  —     9      4     4
Braves    822  12x  —    15    10    5
     Jake Bieker & Kreutzer; Tyler Nuss, Dillon Reiser & Mitch Johnsonn. W — Nuss (1-0); L — Bieker. 2B — Great Bend: Ward.