Defiance Baseball falls to Manchester in midweek battle

NORTH MANCHESTER, Ind. - The Yellow Jackets Baseball team fell to Manchester Tuesday night in a midweek Heartland Collegiate Athletic Conference battle 19-9.

The Yellow Jackets (7-16, 1-10 HCAC) took an early lead and then tied the game in the third inning, but fell behind in the middle innings and were unable to generate enough offense to match the high-scoring Spartans.

Defiance had its highest hit total of the season (14) and tied its third highest run total of the year in the losing effort to the HCAC-leading Spartans.

Darin Waterman gave the Yellow Jackets a lead in the top of the first inning with a sacrifice fly that scored Aaron Helland.

However, Manchester grabbed the lead in the bottom of the second inning with a three-run home run. Despite falling behind, the Yellow Jackets answered in the top of third with a Ben Weber two-RBI single that scored Ryan Kohlhofer and Chris Donese to tie the game at three.

Defiance was unable to match the pace of Manchester, who responded with a run in the bottom of the third and three more runs in the fourth to jump ahead 7-3. 

The Yellow Jackets trimmed the gap to 7-5 with two runs in the top of the fifth. First, Waterman picked up his second sacrifice fly of the game that scored Helland. Two batters later, Gary Levengood doubled and scored Kohlhofer from second base.

That was the closest that DC would get back to Manchester, as the Spartans capitalized on four timely hits to score six runs in the bottom of the fifth and open up the game to a 13-5 lead.

After giving up three more runs in the bottom of the sixth inning, Defiance's offense got going again with three runs in the top of the seventh. Patrick Masopust had a bases loaded single that score Weber for the first run of the inning. Then, Zack Reed scored two more runs in the next at bat with a single to right center that scored Tyler Sloan and Levengood.

Defiance would add one more run in the ninth, on a Hellend single that scored Sloan, but it was not enough to cut the Manchester lead.

Helland led the way for Defiance with three hits on the night. All nine starters recorded at least one hit with Weber, Levengood and Donese all recording two hits.

Waterman, Reed and Weber all finished with two RBIs in the game.

On the mound, Nick Watkins (1-2) picked up the loss after giving up seven runs, four earned, in 3.1 innings pitched. Matt Goodpaster, Aaron Paprocki, Nick Ewalt, and Chris Douglas also made appearances for the Yellow Jackets.

The Yellow Jackets will look to rebound on Wednesday with a game scheduled for a 4 p.m. start at Lourdes University in Toledo.