Parkland High School Baseball

Before tonight's game against the Nazareth Blue Eagles, Parkland's senior players honored nine school teachers with a Shirt Off My Back Award.  Ten innings and more than two hours and thirty minutes later, the Trojans pushed across the lone run of the game in the bottom of the 10th inning on a Nazareth error with the bases loaded to walk off with a 1-0 win.  Tonight was another game of strong Parkland pitching that was equally matched against strong pitching from the Blue Eagles as the game remained scoreless through 9 innings of play.  Three Parkland pitchers combined for 17 strikeouts and the 2-hit shutout.  Nazareth's starting hurler went 9 shutout innings scattering seven Parkland base hits before giving way to a reliever in the bottom of the 10 inning. 

Parkland had an opportunity to score early in the game when they loaded the bases in the 2nd inning on singles by Rhett Jacoby (1-for-4) and Andrew Roth (1-for-4), and a walk to Austin Mueller (1-for-3, double, BB), but the runners were stranded on base.  Only two Trojans batters would reach base over the next five innings of play.  Justin Afflerbach (2-for-4, intentional BB) was left stranded on base in the 3rd inning after leading off with a single and Tyler Bruno (1-for-4, double) was stranded on second base after a 2-out double in the 6th inning.  Back-to-back singles by Afflerbach and Chris Rabasco (2-for-4, intentional BB) with one out in the 8th inning put Parkland in good shape to end the extra inning game, but they too would be stranded on base.  In all the Trojans stranded a total of 11 base runners during the game. 

Starting pitcher Michael Jenkins went 4 and 2/3 innings before having to leave the game due to injury.   Jenkins dominated the Blue Eagles allowing only one base hit with no walks and had 9 strikeouts.  Jenkins retired 13 of the 16 batters he faced with one of those batters reaching base due to a Parkland fielding error.  Harsha Bollu took the mound in relief of Jenkins and Bollu worked three innings allowing one base hit with two walks.  Bollu had five strikeouts.  After Nazareth loaded the bases with two outs in the top of the 8th inning on a base hit and two walks, Evan McAndrew took the mound in relief of Bollu and got the final out of the inning with an infield pop up to end the Nazareth threat.  McAndrew went on to pitch 2 and 1/3 perfect innnings of relief for the win, retiring all seven batters he faced in order, along with three strikeouts. 

In the bottom of the 10th inning, Mueller doubled on a fly ball that dropped into left-center.  After reaching third base on a wild pitch, intentional walks to Afflerbach and Rabasco loaded the bases with one out.  With the Nazareth infield playing up, McAndrew grounded to second base.  The throw to homeplate was wide of the catcher and pinch runner EJ Brandt scored the walk off winning run for the 1-0 victory.