It was a night to forget for the Chillicothe Mudcats at Shaffer Park on Tuesday, as a late onslaught from their opponents, the Warren County Cropdusters, meant that the Mudcats dropped their seventh MINK League game of the season, by a final score of 17-7.
The 17 runs that Warren County scored were the most runs the Cropdusters had scored in game thus far this season. On the other hand, it was the most amount of runs that Chillicothe had allowed in a game this season.
Both teams scored a total of five runs each in the first two innings of play, as both starters in the game, Chillicothe’s Jayden Cabezudo, and Warren County’s Kole Sonnenburg, dealt with struggles on the mound early on. Chillicothe’s early runs came off of a 3-run triple by Owen Bushnell in the first, and a sacrifice fly by Jackson Crawford and an RBI double by Tanner Sears in the second.
The game would remain quiet until the bottom of the fifth inning, when the Mudcats took the lead. Sears would score the next run of the game, hitting a double again to lead off the inning, and eventually scoring on an infield single by Owen Bushnell to make it 6-5 Chillicothe. Good relief pitching for the Mudcats in the first seven innings helped the lead stay there.
The Mudcats went into the top of the eighth inning, holding onto that one run lead with six outs to get. Unfortunately, that’s when the wheels fell off for the Mudcats, when reliever Justin Schnell came in. A dropped third strike allowed the leadoff runner on for the Cropdusters, followed by a hit by pitch from and an error, both from Schnell, to allow the bases to become loaded with no outs.
Schnell would get the next hitter to pop out, but following that, he hit a second batter, allowing the tying run to score. Schnell would then allow five more Warren County runs to cross the plate in just 1/3 of an inning of work, and the Mudcats lead was gone and forgotten.
In the bottom of the eighth, the Mudcats frustration, which grew after the top half of the inning, reached a boiling point as Mudcats head coach Tyler Hudlow was ejected following a late strikeout call from the home plate umpire. It was Hudlow’s first ejection of the season.
Warren County put the game away in the ninth, scoring six more runs, this time on Mudcats reliever Max Randis. Randis would hit four Cropdusters batsmen in his one inning of work. The Cropdusters scored the 12 runs in the final two innings on just three hits, as the Mudcats field also committed three costly errors in the nightmare finish.
Chillicothe would muster one run in the ninth, but it was obviously too little, too late. The Cropdusters broke a six game losing streak in the MINK League with the victory, and Chillicothe moved to 4-7 in the MINK League with the loss, and 5-7 overall. They currently sit in fifth place in the MINK League standings following the evening.
Chillicothe split the two games in back to back days against Warren County and now will have an off day to reset on Wednesday before getting back into action on Thursday night with a first meeting of the season against the Clarinda A’s on the road. First pitch from Clarinda, IA will occur at 7:05 p.m. on Thursday. Don’t forget, you can always listen to the Chillicothe Mudcats in action every game this season on KCHI and kchi.com.
