Yorkville small ball wears down Tinley

Updated: May 27, 2011 10:21PM

The formula was simple for Yorkville against Tinley Park, as against any opponent: get the leadoff batter on base, move him into scoring position and let the RBI guys bring him in.

The Foxes executed that scenario to perfection Friday night in a Tinley Park Class 3A Regional semifinal as Yorkville scored a run in each of the first, second and fourth innings and piled on with three runs in the fifth on the way to a 6-1 victory.

“We’ve done that well the last couple of weeks,” Yorkville coach Scott Luken said. “Getting guys on, getting them over and getting them in. Our kids really executed well today.”

Tinley Park struggled to keep the Foxes’ Jacob Mathre from doing damage. The senior hit an RBI double in the first, RBI single in his second at-bat and then crushed a two-run homerun to left center in his third at-bat, scoring leadoff hitter Luke Lucchetti each time.

“I’m seeing the ball really good, I guess,” Mathre said. “That’s really about it.”

It didn’t help that the Titans committed four errors and only managed two hits off of Yorkville starter Derek Piszczek.

The righthander didn’t have to strike out a single batter to pick up the complete game win. Instead, he pitched to contact and every ball hit was right at a fielder.

“Derek has pitching like that all year for us,” Luken said. “He doesn’t walk a lot of guys, gets a lot of groundballs, a lot of flyballs. He went out and just did his job the way he always does.”

The Titans only run came in the bottom of the third after Andrew Sebastian reached on an error, stole a base and scored on Owen Griffin’s RBI single.

“When you have a 6-11 matchup, I’m not saying you expect an easy game, but they are way better than an 11 seed, by far,” Tinley Park coach Brian Gibbons said. “They play the game really well, they’re well coached. That kid threw strikes today. We grounded out to third a thousand times, we grounded out to the pitcher. That was half of our outs right there.”

The Titans grounded out to third or to the pitcher for 10 of their 21 outs. Max Simon had the only other hit for Tinley, which finishes its season with an 18-13 mark.

The Foxes (19-15) move on to face Lemont at 11 a.m. today in the regional final thanks to Mathre’s big blow.

“That was something that told our guys ‘Hey, we’re going to take care of this today,’” Luken said. “I think it really deflated them a little bit. It was nice to get those extra few runs and really put it away.”

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