Little Apple Times

Scotties Travel To Pratt For Four Game Series

Scottie Baseball finished off the first part of their 2023 spring season by traveling to Pratt, Kansas to take on the Beavers of Pratt Community College. Pratt came away victorious in series winning 3 games to 1 over the Scotties. Highland had a tough time capitalizing offensively through the weekend leaving 59 runners on base and striking out 34 times in the four games. Although Highland led in two of the four games they combined to make 10 errors on the weekend defensively giving Pratt multiple second chances to extend innings. 

 

"It was a frustrating weekend in several areas for us and we will work to tighten things up where we need to as we prepare to face Allen County this coming weekend", said Head Coach Landon Hay. "We have a lot of young guys contributing a lot of innings on both sides of the baseball and the mistakes we made this weekend and up to this point in the year are certainly a byproduct of our inexperience at times. We knew as a coaching staff there would be some growing pains for sure, but we are still in a much better place as a program and have some very bright spots and positives to focus on as we move forward."

 

There are bright spots for the Scottie's as they prepare for the start of Jayhawk conference play this weekend. Six Highland hitters currently hold a batting average over .300 with Sophomore outfielder Filip Sarota leading the way, hitting .429 with 5 home runs, 6 doubles, 21 runs batted in and a slugging percentage of .898. Sarota is followed up by Freshman Dylan Shepherd hitting .391 with 3 doubles and 10 runs batted in. Freshman Sergio Fierro is hitting .341 with 3 doubles and 11 runs batted in. Kyle McConachie, Zach Knowlton and Jake Bream round out the group of 6 top hitters for Highland this season with Knowlton pacing all Scotties with 9 stolen bases. 

 

On the mound for Highland, sophomore Connor Pruyser continues to impress in the starting rotation with a 2-0 record in 4 starts, and an earned run average under a 2.0. Several bright spots have emerged from the Scottie Bullpen as well in the forms of Freshmen, Nick Brubeck, Colton Minks, Levi Helm, Drew Carter, Tucker Russell and Wyley Brown. "Our pitchers really have done a good job of keeping us in ball games and giving us a chance to win, the scores don't always portray that but the fact of the matter is, we have to field the ball better behind them and capitalize better on offense in order to win more games. Our pitchers have done an outstanding job in my opinion up to this point and we'll continue to work hard on both sides of the ball to help translate into more wins", said coach Hay. 

 

Next up for Highland (7-8) is Allen County and the start of KJCCC east division play. The Red Devils currently sit at 8-7 on the year and are coming off two wins over Ottawa Univeristy JV. As always, stay tuned to Scottieathletics.com and @Scottie_Bsbl on Twitter for updates on all schedule changes as they occur. 

Original source can be found here.