Mechanicsville claims 4-3 baseball win over New Kent

Josh Scholl was unfazed.

Sure, New Kent’s Andrew Staskiel greeted him Thursday night with a leadoff double. 

Sure, Jonathan Hochman followed in short order with a single to center which sent Staskiel home to give the visiting Trojans a quick 1-0 lead over Scholl’s Mechanicsville Mustangs.

In the face of adversity, though, the junior righthander gathered his wits. He narrowed his focus.

Bear down, he told himself. Just pitch. My guys are behind me. They have my back.

So they did.

Six innings later as twilight descended and the cool breeze picked up, the Mustangs put the finishing touches on their 4-3 victory over New Kent.

Though they provided Scholl with three runs in the bottom of the first and added another in the fifth, the Trojans never capitulated and, through will and timely hitting, turned an apparent multi-run defeat into a nailbiter by scoring twice in the top of the seventh before the home team put them away.

“They’re a really good team,” said Tyler Johnson, the Mustangs’ coach, of New Kent. “It might have looked easy for a few innings, but it was not.

“Their whole lineup is solid, one through nine. That’s a testament to Josh Scholl.”

Scholl pitched six innings, surrendered four hits, walked four, and struck out six. He threw 97 pitches, 58 for strikes.

He worked his way out of his first-inning, runners-on-the-corners jam by forcing an infield pop-up for the third out.

“I’ve given up runs in the first inning before,” Scholl said. “It’s just my mindset to come back and dominate the other innings I get to pitch.

“They’re a good hitting team. They just hit the ball. There was nothing I could do about it. I looked at my teammates. They were behind me. They didn’t get flustered.”

In the next inning, a well-executed second (Bradley Hoge)-to-shortstop (Wyatt Parker)-to-first (Kody Karnes) double play quelled another threat.

An inning later, when the Trojans advanced runners to second and third with one out, Scholl solved the dilemma with back-to-back strikeouts.

“That was a lot of adrenalin running through the bones,” Scholl said. “That’s a big situation against a good team. I had to come out, make some pitches, and throw strikes.”

Just as New Kent (6-1) made its first-inning statement, likewise did Mechanicsville (5-2).

Hoge led off with a single to center and advanced to second when Dylan Wright reached first on an error.

Parker then walked to load the bases with no outs.

Designated hitter Ben Favreau followed with a single to right center to score Hoge.

Karnes’s single scored Wright, and Shawn Moore’s single scored Parker before the Trojans ended the inning with a short (Brady Cash)-to-second (Ethan Johnson)-to-first (Jaxon Foreman) double play.

“Our offensive approach this year is playing small ball and making the other team make plays,” said Wright, a senior catcher and team leader. “In the first innings, we were hitting hard ground balls, and they had to make plays.

“We hustled, they made errors, and that’s really how we scored in the first inning.”

The Mustangs padded their lead with a run in the fifth. 

Turns out that it was the difference maker.

Wright walked with one out. Pinch runner Connor Robertson replaced him and immediately stole second.

With two outs, Eli Maxie reached first on an error enabling Robertson, who was running on the pitch, to race home.

“One thing that we talk about and pride ourselves in on the base paths is being aggressive and not hesitating,” Wright said. “That really speaks to what our team is like, for sure.”

With one out in the top of the seventh, Staskiel and pinch hitter Jakub Bowen drew consecutive walks.

With two outs, Austin Uzzle walked to load the bases.

Hochman followed with a single to centerfield to score Staskiel and Bowen, and then, with the pressure on, reliever Collin Peters ended the game with his third strikeout of the inning.

“We faced a little adversity,” Johnson said. “There was some traffic early in the game. Josh missed some spots, and they made him pay, but he limited the damage, which was huge.

“We were resilient. We really bounced back. We’re not going to quit. We’re going to keep coming at you, no matter what. And we’re going to get better.”