BY AARON PATTERSON
CNHI
CHAMPAIGN —
Prior to the beginning of the District 18 tournament, Danville Post 210 Speakers manager Adam Decker made a point to make his pitchers throw a bull pen session.
With nearly 12 available arms on the roster, Decker has had to worry more about keeping arms fresh rather than the alternative of limiting innings so that his staff doesn’t tire too quickly.
Joe Pratt might be thankful for the side session when he was unexpected called upon to pitch in the Speakers’ 10-7 Division Four semifinal win over Mattoon Post 88.
In his last outing, Pratt threw six innings allowing only two earned runs and one hit. The problem is, that was three weeks ago. Fortunately, there were no signs of rust on Pratt’s arm.
“I haven’t thrown in about three weeks, so I was feeling pretty good,” Pratt said. “Coach told me to go warm up, and after the first inning, he said, ‘You’re on.’ I kind of looked at him all weird and he said, ‘You’re on.’ It just took me by surprise a little bit. I went out there and tried to throw strikes and tried to keep it low and just throw.”
Danville starter Blake Janesky had the cushion of a four-run lead when he took the mound in the bottom of the first after Aaron Lewellyn hit a grand slam. But with hot bats up and down the Mattoon lineup, and a flustered defense that committed four errors in the first inning, Janesky’s time was limited to one inning, and Decker chose to see if a different look might keep Post 88 off balance.
Pratt (5-0) threw the remaining eight innings, striking out five and allowing only one earned run.
The irony in Pratt’s performance might have been that Decker hadn’t even considered the left hander taking innings when the day began.
“Really, it came down to, I couldn’t get anybody warmed up because (Cody) Burton was up to bat, and then Lewellyn was up to bat,” Decker said. “So, I’m looking down the lineup some and I said, ‘Joe, you’ve got to go throw.’ It just kind of worked out. I said, ‘Just give me one inning here.’ It turned into eight.”
A little run support didn’t hurt, either. After Lewellyn hit his first-inning grand slam, he went on to drive in another run on a sacrifice fly in the second, scored in the fifth on Pratt’s fielder’s choice, and hit a solo shot to left in the seventh to give the Speakers their final lead of the game at 6-5.
When the season began, Decker had intended to use Lewellyn as primarily a pitcher.
But when he was able to get a few at-bats, his production made it hard to take him out of the lineup.
The two homers pushed his season total to four, with three coming in the postseason. His first of the postseason came on a first-inning grand slam in the District 18 championship game against Kansas.
“I think all the batting practice we’ve been taking helps, but when they just give you a first pitch that you can hit, it really helps,” Lewellyn said. “You’ve just got to be aggressive and go up there and hit a pitch you want and lay off the ones that they want you to hit.”
Lewellyn finished the day with six RBIs, while Pratt had two.
Despite Lewellyn’s offensive production, the Speakers tallied only seven hits and took advantage of four Mattoon errors. Danville might have felt as though it escaped with a win in a game that could have turned disastrous after the four first-inning errors.
“I can’t even tell you what happened in that first inning,” Decker said. “We did everything wrong possible that we could. We couldn’t catch the ball, we couldn’t throw the ball, we were kicking it around. We just gave them five runs (in the first inning).
“I’m just proud of the guys the way that they came back. It’s a game of momentum. Yeah, we got the momentum right off the bat with the grand slam, and it would have been nice not to look back from there, but we gave the momentum right back to them. I think it could have been just absolutely devastating to some teams. But not this one. They fought through it and came back.”
Now the Speakers are in relatively unfamiliar territory as they enter today’s 4:45 p.m. championship game. Instead of fighting back through the loser’s bracket in an attempt to earn the title, Post 210 will only have to win one game in order to advance to next week’s state tournament.
Danville is schedule to play the winner of Friday’s late loser’s bracket game between Mattoon and Lincoln, both of which the Speakers have defeated.
“It’s real tough,” Lewellyn said. “You try and exert all of your energy to win that first game, and then you just have to use all of your reserves and any energy you have in that second game. It’s doable, but it just takes a lot out of your whole team.
“That’s a big advantage knowing that you’ve already beat them once in this tournament,” he continued. “It kind of demoralizes the other team. But we’ve still got to come out and play our game, and keep hitting like we have been.”
