The Green Bay Bullfrogs dropped a 13-1 game to Wisconsin Rapids June 3 at Johannes Stadium (Rich Palzewic photo).
BY RICH PALZEWIC
CORRESPONDENT
GREEN BAY – What a difference a night makes.
A day after beating Wisconsin Rapids 13-5, the Green Bay Bullfrogs baseball team was on the wrong end of a 13-1 battering to the same Rafters team June 3 at Johannes Stadium in Northwoods League action.
Rapids (4-2) busted out the bats by collecting 15 hits off four Green Bay (2-4) pitchers on another windy and cool day for baseball.
“You hope this doesn’t happen too often, but it was just one of those days,” said Bullfrogs manager Kirk Shrider. “In the game of baseball it happens. There’s a little history there between Rapids and me. It was nice to go there (Saturday night) and get a few cheers and see some people I recognized.”
Shrider spent the last two summers as an assistant coach with the Rafters. He played a big part in their first NWL championship in 2016 and also helped lead the franchise to a league record 52-win season in 2017.
Green Bay pitchers walked eight and had five wild pitches, while the offense managed only three hits and a single tally in the third inning.
Of Green Bay’s 27 recorded outs, 22 came via strikeout or fly out/pop out.
“Even on ground balls, you’re not going to find a lot of situations where the defense is going to miss those, but we just had way to many strikeouts and pop ups,” Shrider said. “In the hierarchy of things, those are the two worst ways to get outs. I think the guys are just trying to do too much at the plate.”
The Bullfrogs got an unearned run in the third on a run-scoring triple by Riley Mihalik (Rider) to deep right-center field. Blaise Maris (Florida Tech) – who reached on a one-out walk – scored on the play.
The only other legitimate chance the ‘Frogs had to score was in the first when they stranded the bases loaded.
Only five Green Bay base runners advanced to second base or beyond the entire game, including just one after the third inning.
Rapids used a five-run third (four of the runs were unearned) where they sent 10 batters to the plate and a four-run seventh to bust the game wide open.
Georgia Tech pitcher Hugh Chapman started on the mound for the Bullfrogs and had an easy first inning but ran into trouble in the next two innings.
“Hugh just got here a few days ago and hasn’t pitched a lot,” said Shrider. “He has very limited innings and is still trying to even learn guys’ names. It was just a situation where I think he just ran out of gas. He was probably dealing with some anxiety just getting here to Green Bay … it was just too many pitches. We left him out there to see if he could work himself out of it and learn from it.”
Chapman worked the first three innings before giving way to Elijah Baez (St. Bonaventure) in the fourth. Tyler Rosas (Dixie State) and Brody Curtiss (Augustana) also saw action.
Besides the triple by Mahalik, Cooper Morrison (UC-Davis) and Ethan Ibarra (St. Cloud State) had the only other hits for Green Bay.
The Bullfrogs return to action on Monday, June 4, when they host the Kenosha Kingfish in the first of a two-game series beginning at 6:35.
Box Score
Wisconsin Rapids: 015 000 421 – 13 15 1
Green Bay: 001 000 000 – 1 3 1