Dutch bats fire off late to beat ADM, 12-3

PELLA — Baseball and the Fourth of July go together like peanut butter and jelly. With the background noise of fireworks exploding as the night went on, the No. 2 Pella baseball squad needed a late burst from their bats to come away with a 12-3 win over ADM on Thursday night.

The Dutch got the scoring started in the bottom of the first with Samuel Carlson ripping a leadoff single. An ADM error would then put a pair on for Isaiah Kettler would knock one into right field for an RBI single. The right fielder’s throw would get by the third baseman, allowing another Pella run to score to make it 2-0.

Meanwhile, Pella’s big lefty Teagan Hoekstra was making just his fourth start of the season after recovering from a preseason injury for most of the summer. Hoekstra was the ace of Pella’s state tournament team a year ago and showed some flashes of that in his three shutout innings where he only allowed one hit with one walk and three strikeouts.

“Really happy to see Teagan back out there,” Pella head coach Jesse Jablonski said. “It's been a tough season for him but he's been really working hard to try to get back before the season was over. His last bullpen a couple of nights ago he felt really good so we wanted to see what he could do tonight. It was great seeing him go three scoreless and be pain free, so that's promising.”

VandeLune would replace Hoekstra for the fourth inning and the Tiger bats would get their bats going with a couple of two-out RBI hits to take a 3-2 lead.

ADM starter Jackson Siefken had retired 11 of the next 12 batters he faced after the Kettler RBI single and the Dutch were needing a spark in the fifth inning. That spark would come courtesy of senior first baseman Lucas Jablonski, who fouled off a several pitches before sending his own firework into the sky and over the left field fence for a solo home run to tie the game at 3-3.

That homer would awaken the Pella bats as they would tally three more hits in the inning with Kettler ripping a two RBI double into the gap to put Pella back in front with a 5-3 lead.

“I’m proud of this team for just staying with the approach and staying with the game plan,” Jablonski said. "They didn't really get out of sorts when we did fall behind. Give a lot of credit to Lucas. He battled through a really good at-bat and fouled off some tough pitches before he got a hanging curveball over the middle of the plate and put a good swing on it. I think the at-bats just really seemed to be a lot more relaxed and guys went up to the plate with a lot of confidence after that.”

That confidence spilled over into the sixth inning where Pella would bat around with an RBI double by Lincoln Kocour getting things started, followed by an RBI single by Jablonski, an RBI ground out by Brandon Knox and a two RBI single by Hayes Lautenbach ballooning to Pella lead to 12-3 as part of a seven run inning to help put the game away.

Kettler led the Pella bats going 3-for-4 with two doubles and three RBIs. Jablonski finished 2-for-3 with a home run and two RBIs. Pella used four pitchers on the night with Hoekstra, VandeLune, Lautenbach and Carlson combining to give up three runs on four hits with four walks and eight strikeouts.

“The last couple of games here we've kind of ran out a more consistent lineup versus most of the year where we've been rotating guys through,” Jablonski said. “We kind of felt like we needed these last couple of weeks to get a playoff lineup out there and just to get them consistent at-bats. Hopefully tonight is kind of a sign that the offense is getting kickstarted. We've been a little bit in the funk here lately offensively, but hopefully we can continue this momentum into next week.”

No. 2 Pella (21-6) has a couple of more tuneups next week before postseason play starting with a doubleheader against Washington (4-19) on Monday at 5 p.m.