Antigo baseball staves off Hatchets comeback rally

By Craig Marx, Editor

In Great Northern Conference play, Antigo Red Robins baseball took a 7-4 road win over the Tomahawk Hatchets on Friday evening.

“Great win after last night’s tough battle (in Mosinee),” Antigo head coach Scott Farmer said. “We started out well and sat on our lead and it came back to bite us.”

The tough battle that Farmer alluded to was a 2-1 loss for the Robins on Thursday evening at the hands of the GNC’s Mosinee Indians. Pulling out to a 4-1 lead after three innings, Antigo had nearly let Friday’s game slip away to the Hatchets.

After Brady Tatro and Hunter Kirsch reached base on an error and a single, respectively, consecutive RBI base hits from Nick Greening and Jake Husnick gave Antigo a 2-0 lead going into the bottom of the first. Tomahawk’s Isaac Weber halved the Antigo lead in the bottom of the inning, scoring on Kaleb Kaminski sacrifice fly to left field.

Matt Winter added another Robin run in the top of the second. As Antigo went three up, three down in the top of the fourth, Weber recorded an RBI single in the bottom of the inning to bring in Nick Baacke and cut Antigo’s lead to 4-2.

The Robins only got three batters to the plate in the top of the fifth, grounding to third twice and popping out to left field. The Hatchets took advantage of Antigo’s stalled bats, adding two runs on Baacke single that plated Kaminski and Cayton Scholz.

With the game now tied at four all, Antigo returned to form in the top of the sixth. A lead-off double by Greening began the inning, and Arin VerHagen later singled with one out. Alex Nagel blasted a two-RBI triple, but was later caught trying to reach home. As Winter reached on a third baseman error, Collin Meinert brought in the sophomore centerfielder with an RBI double.

“Alex came back and really had a nice at-bat to get us the lead right back,” Farmer added.

Kirsch was brought in for closing duty in the final two innings, retiring all six batters he faced with three strikeouts and no walks allowed.

“Hunter did an outstanding job peppering the zone and shutting them down for the remainder of the game,” Farmer said.

Jake Fleischman picked up the win for Antigo in relief of the starter Nagel, with Kirsch picking up the save. Nagel was relieved after 4.2 innings pitched, in which he recorded four strikeouts and four walks while allowing five hits and four runs (three earned).

Kominski was handed the loss for the Hatchets. Lasting all seven innings, Kominski was credited with six of the Robins’ seven total runs on 12 Antigo hits. He also retired two batters on strikeouts.

Greening was 3-4with a run batted in and another scored. Husnick went 2-4 with two RBIs, while Nagel 1-4 with a pair of RBIs as well.

Antigo will step outside of Great Northern Conference play momentarily as it hosts Wausau West this evening at Kretz Field, beginning at 4:30 p.m.