Beckman scores early, then Krutiak takes control as Patriots defeat Jordan 3-1 in tourney

Niklas Krutiak fires a pitch for the Patriots Thursday (Photos courtesy Rosalene Ledendecker For OC Sports Zone).

Beckman’s baseball team pushed across two unearned runs in the first inning, then looked to Niklas Krutiak to take it from there Thursday in a consolation round game of the National Classic.

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Krutiak did his job, pitching the first six innings scattering six hits and allowing one run to lead the Patriots to a 3-1 victory over Jordan from Sandy, Utah at Beckman.

He struck out four. Tristan Dupont game on to pitch one scoreless inning.

It was kind of a strange beginning to the game. Sean McLain and Ricky Teel singled to put runners on first and second. With one out, Alec Gomez walked to load the bases. Then Nick McLain flied out to right field but the ball wasn’t deep enough to score McLain.

But an errant throw allowed both McLain and Teel to score. Gomez, who was also trying to score, was thrown out to end the inning.

“Baseball is such a strange sport; that’s a really highly ranked team in the state of Utah and the interesting thing about spring break tournament games is you really don’t know how good the teams are that you’re going to play, so we just try and emphasize it doesn’t matter how good your opponent is; you just have to play the game our way,” said Beckman Coach Kevin Lavalle.

“We score two runs in the first on an error they make and if you were watching the first inning, you thought maybe Beckman would run away with it. But that pitcher for them (Jacob Shaver) has committed to University of Arizona as a shortstop and that guy hands down was the best pitcher we’ve seen this season. It didn’t take long for us to realize that. It wasn’t real pretty what we did at the plate but I love the way our guys battled and you have to find ways to score runs sometimes.”

Beckman (15-4) added another unearned run in the fourth inning. Logan Jackson reached on an error, stole second and scored on an RBI single by CJ Burnette to put the Patriots ahead 3-0.

Krutiak worked out of trouble in the first and second innings.

After a walk and a hit batter, Trevor Sukan delivered an RBI single in the sixth to break the shutout bid for Jordan (4-5-1)

“I just do what I do every day, I go out there, I throw strikes and my defense played surprisingly well today, they had my back,” Krutiak said. “The double play by Sean McLain (in the fourth inning) really got me motivated. I worked off that, I just threw strikes and did my job and my team did the rest.

“I wasn’t really worried about how many pitches I was going to throw; I was well rested. I just wanted to do the best I can for my team, throw strikes, work for my team and let them do the rest, and they did.”

Lavalle said the plan was to let Krutiak go as far as he could.

“Nik has done a great job all year,” Lavalle said. “He started a couple games. He’s kind of been our ace out of the bullpen this year. We went into today thinking, ‘let’s Nik throw a little bit today and see how far we can stretch him out,’ not knowing what the score is going to be or how many innings he was going to go.We just wanted him to get his pitch count up because he hasn’t really done that this season and he battled.”

Teel had two of the four Beckman hits.

Beckman also defeated Pleasant Grove from Utah 6-2 on Monday and lost to San Dimas 4-2 on Tuesday. In that game, Trevor Ernt took his first high school loss and finally allowed an earned run. Ernt (7-1) had a streak of 42 2/3 innings consecutive innings without giving up an earned run until San Dimas scored in the fifth inning.

“He pitched great and ends up getting the loss, the first loss of his career,” Lavalle said. “That was a game he probably deserved to win. It’s a hard sport sometimes.”

Beckman will play one tournament make-up game on Saturday, April 13 against El Dorado at 11 a.m. at Beckman.

“I think we definitely learned a lot about ourselves and I think that’s the reason you schedule these games,” Lavalle said.

-Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com