No. 2 Crown Point Gets Walk Off Win

By Ben Grossberg
Lead Scout, PBR Indiana

Crown Point, IN – No. 21 Portage traveled to take on No. 2 Crown Point on Thursday afternoon. The game had a great pitching match up with 2014 Kevin Jones on the mound for Portage and 2013 Parkland commit Ronnie Plesac for Crown Point. In the first inning Jones sat 86-88 and Plesac sat 85-87. 

Crown Point got on the board first as Jones struggled to find the strike zone early on, walking four in the first inning to bring in the first run of the game. In the second inning Jake Jatis hit a sacrifice fly to bring in Glenn Hecht giving Crown Point a 2-0 lead. With two outs and first and third Zach Plesac stole second and on the throw to second Tyler Downing scored from third. 

With Crown Point up 3-0 Jones settled in and wouldn't allow another walk in his outing  and struck out seven over his next four innings of work. 

Portage’s offense got to Ronnie Plesac in the fourth and the fifth innings. A one out single by Jacob Bearss and a double by Peter Psomedelis gave Portage runners on second and third. Sam Schest came up and laid down a perfect squeeze bunt scoring Bearss to cut the deficit to 3-1 after four. In the fifth Eric Mesarch had a RBI single bringing in Patrick Derr and Kevin Jones tied the game with a sacrifice fly. 

Both teams had chances to score in the sixth. Portage got a runner to third with one out, but Zach Plesac (89-91 mph), who was now on the mound, got back to back ground ball outs to end the threat.  In the bottom of the sixth Crown Point had runners on second and third and Alex Nickla attempted to steal home, but was caught ending the inning. 

After Zach Plesac got out of the top of the seventh inning with no harm done, Crown Point came up with their chance to end it. Ronnie Plesac was up first in the bottom of the seventh and drove a pitch to center. When it left the bat it looked like it would end the game, but it hit half way up the fence for a lead-off double. Bobby Morgan then hit a single to right, but pinch runner Chris Dietrich couldn’t score because it was almost caught. With first and third and no outs, Johnny Lynk stepped in and lined a ball to center that was caught by Kevin Jones. Dietrich didn’t tag up, so Jones threw to first to try and double up Morgan. The throw to first allowed Dietrich time to tag and score from third to end the game. 

FINAL Crown Point 4, Portage 3