OLEAN – The Olean baseball team defeated Portville 7-2 on Wednesday to finish their regular season strong.
Starting pitcher Chase Vogtli got to shine at the plate with a two-run home run in the bottom of the sixth. It’s a good momentum boost for a team looking to hit their stride as playoffs approach.
Olean started the game with a 1-0 first inning lead, then made it 3-0 in the second inning off a Joe Mest double turning into a run and a Dominik Myers RBI single.
Vogtli pitched great through the first four innings, allowing only two hits and two walks. But all of a sudden in the fifth the Panthers started to challenge the Husky advantage.
Two straight walks were followed by a single to load the bases with no outs. Vogtli walked in another batter to score a run with the bases still loaded.
But a key moment in the game occurred when a pop fly just past the infield was dropped. It created a double play when the ball was thrown home and the runner on second didn’t leave for third resulting in another out.
It was a huge moment that Portville coach Joseph Pleakis saw as an infield fly rule that would have kept Portville’s opportunity alive.
“I thought there was an infield fly, I guess there wasn’t,” Pleakis said. “I think there were some unfortunate things that piled up against us today.”
If it wasn’t for that play, Portville may have taken the lead in the fifth. Olean got out of the inning still in front up 3-2 after new pitcher Taylor Teachman struck out Mekhi Muhyee to end the Panther opportunity.
“That’s typical for a baseball game,” Olean coach Les DeGolier said. “You are going to have a couple innings where they stack the bases. It’s how you respond, if you can get out of those key situations instead of giving up a couple runs it goes a long way towards wins.”
It didn’t matter much anyways, Olean was able to score two more runs in the bottom of the fifth to make it 5-2 after Portville reliever Colin German hit two batters and walked another to load the bases and a fielder’s choice with an error scored two runs.
Olean finished the evening with a two-run blast over the center field fence from Vogtli to make it 7-2 in the bottom of the sixth, and Teachman pitched three scoreless innings to keep Portville from challenging the lead again.
Myers finished 2-4 with an RBI, and Ethan Woodring went 2-3 along with Joe Mest going 2-3 to lead the Olean attack. Portville’s Izayah Edmund led the Panthers going 2-4 with a pair of singles.
Portville pitcher Brady German started the game and had four innings pitched and three earned runs. Colin German then finished the game with two innings pitched while allowing four. Vogtli finished his day with 4.2 innings pitched allowing two earned runs.
Olean (7-8) and Portville (9-7) will start to think about playoff baseball now.
“I think we are getting better in all three phases,” DeGolier said. “Tonight we hit the ball well, we had pretty good pitching for the most part even though we rotated a couple guys through. I feel like we are in a good spot.”
