Clever’s Spencer Flatt and Hartville’s Jace Keith, both juniors, hooked up in a classic pitcher’s duel, with Flatt’s Blue Jays coming out on top, 3-1, on Thursday night. Flatt went seven innings, allowing three hits, walking one, and striking out four. Keith went seven innings, scattering seven hits, giving up one earned run while striking out seven.
Clever scored in the first inning, taking a 1-0 lead. After that, Keith would not allow Clever any more runs until the fifth inning. Hartville, in the meantime, was having a hard time making good contact against Flatt.
“I’ve been pitching pretty good lately, and just to come out here and do that for my team makes me happy, makes my team happy, and makes my coach happy,” said Flatt. “My curveball was working pretty good. I focus on the batter and don’t worry about the base runners; in my head they don’t mean anything. They’re still there, I still have to worry about them, but I have to focus on the guy at the plate. This was a big win tonight.”
Thanks to some shoddy defense by Clever, Hartville loaded the bases in the fourth inning and had no outs. Flatt maintained his composure and got Hartville to ground out, allowing just one run.
“The one area where we’ve not been as sharp as I’ve wanted is on our defensive side,” said Clever coach Justin Snider. “It pains me sometimes to see us letting guys on and giving up runs, but luckily our defense buckled down. Spencer continued to do his job and trust his defense, a lot of ground ball outs, he didn’t get rattled.”
Clever survived the fourth and got two runs of their own in the fifth inning, thanks to some Hartville miscues. Clever played small ball, putting down two bunts and stealing bases to plate two runs in the inning.
“We had two runners at third in different innings, one inning was with one out, and we failed to push him across,” said Hartville coach Joe Garrison. “When a team as good as Clever gives you a couple opportunities to score on them, you’d better take advantage of that. We weren’t able to do that.”
Both pitchers went the distance, not allowing any more runs to cross the plate. Hartville left five men on base while Clever left seven.
“Jace Keith has done a great job on the mound,” said Garrison. “Hopefully, if we could get it together for him offensively, then we could play a lot better. It’s been a problem all year.”
“Spencer commands two pitches, which is important in high school baseball,” said Snider. “You have to be able to command at least two pitches. He’s got a mentality on the mound, instead of ‘I hope I can do this’ he says ‘I know I can do this’, and that’s huge.”
With the season winding up, both teams were looking to gain momentum going into districts. Hartville didn’t get the momentum they wanted tonight.
“I’m hopeful that this group will get the nerves and doubt out of the way and just plow through that one day and kick the door down,” said Garrison. “They gave us a couple of errors and opportunities and we gave them some, and they were able to capitalize on it. That’s baseball. You can’t give good teams extra outs. Both pitchers were throwing strikes, and their pitcher did well keeping the ball down.”
Clever is 9-3 in their last 12 games, 3-0 this week, and is looking to ride Flatt’s arm into districts.
“Spencer has been throwing extremely well this year,” said Snider. “He threw a lot last year as a sophomore, and that gave him a lot of really good game experience. This spring, something clicked, and all of a sudden he’s throwing in big games against Forsyth, Hartville, and he’s playing well.”
Coach Snider likes his chances in his district.
“We started a freshman at third tonight and he played well,” said Snider. “We are senior heavy everywhere else. We’ve got a lot of experience on defense; we’ve got speed in the outfield. We just need to put everything together. You want to be hot going into districts.”
Hartville, the third seed, opens up their district play against Seymour, the sixth seed, on Thursday, May 12th at Norwood. Clever, the fourth seed, will play Diamond, the fifth seed, on Friday, May 13th at Ash Grove.
Clever 3 Hartville 1
Clever 100 020 0 — 3
Hartville 000 100 0 — 1
