O'Connor, Eagles make adjustments, top Rice

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Summer is a time of adjustment and experimentation for prep baseball teams and players, trying to figure out how to get from where they were to where they want to be.

Some of the tweaks are gradual, as with a Sandburg team retooling a pitching staff that graduated Kansas City Royals draft pick Greg Billo and Harvard recruit Will Keuper.

And some are done on the fly, from one at-bat to the next, as was the case for Eagles senior Ian O'Connor on Wednesday morning.

O'Connor took a called third strike with a runner on third to end the second inning in Sandburg's showdown with visiting Brother Rice. That earned him an earful from Eagles coach Doug Sutor.

"Ian and I had a little talk," Sutor said. "He's too good a hitter to watch pitches [like that]. There's no shame in swinging and missing; there's a lot of shame in standing and watching a third strike, especially with runners in scoring position.

"He's a good little hitter."

O'Connor took the message to heart his next time up, delivering a two-out, two-run single that helped the Eagles earn a 9-5 win in South Suburban Summer League North Division action.

"That was a pretty big at-bat, not only for me, but for my team," O'Connor said. "We've got to keep scoring on those guys -- they keep putting up runs."

After leaving a potential run out there in the second, the Eagles second baseman was determined that history wouldn't repeat itself.

"I went up there a little angrier," he said. "I tried to hit the ball hard."

O'Connor has a little history with Rice, as do his teammates. The Eagles and Crusaders have met in the past two sectional finals, splitting the games, and O'Connor's home run -- his first of the season -- was a key hit in Sandburg's win this spring.

"I don't expect him to hit home runs," Sutor said. "I expect him to put the ball in play."

The Eagles (12-2) did that when they weren't taking advantage of Rice pitchers' wildness (seven walks, two hit batters). It was more of the same for the Crusaders (17-3), who also had control issues in a loss to Oak Forest on Tuesday.

"You don't walk 19 batters in two games and hit three and expect to win," Rice coach Tim Lyons said.

Sandburg's pitching staff also is a work in progress as the Eagles get used to life without Billo and Keuper.

"I think we're going to be a scrappy team," O'Connor said. "We're going to really fight for some runs.

"We're not going to have that kind of pitcher we're going to rely on to just blow people away. We don't have that 90 mph fastball anymore."

"We lost a lot of pitching," Sutor said. "It's not a finished product, that's why we get paid to coach."

Walks have been a problem for Sandburg as well this summer, according to their coach. But with the summer state playoffs less than two weeks away, he's hoping the Eagles are ready to take off.

"We talked about it this morning," Sutor said. "Time to get it in gear."

"It's a big game, it's Brother Rice," O'Connor said. "This is the kind of competition we're going to see in the state tournament. From this moment on, we need to focus on [that]."

Besides O'Connor (2-for-4, two RBI), the Eagles had offensive contributions from Alex Kazmerski (1-for-1, three walks, two runs), Keeler Otero (1-for-1, two hit by pitch, two runs) and Bob Newman (1-for-2, two walks, two runs).

Lucas Fritch allowed two runs on four hits over four innings to earn the win.

Rice had a two-run homer from Ricky Palmer (2-for-4) and a solo shot from Kevin Callahan.