DEFIANCE, Ohio – The Defiance Yellow Jackets suffered a pair of losses, 4-0 and 6-1, to the Hanover Panthers for the final home games of the 2023 season on Saturday at Craig Rutter Field.
Game 1 Final: Hanover 4, Defiance 0
Box Score: Click here
Marcus Goodpaster (Win, 8-0) fired a complete-game shutout to outduel Defiance's Cohen Nies (Loss, 2-7) in his final outing for the Yellow Jackets.
Hanover jumped on the scoreboard right away when Alex Christie socked the second pitch of the game off the scoreboard in left-center, his 14th homer of the season.
The Panthers padded their lead with a pair of unearned runs in the fifth inning. Sam Perkins singled through the left side to start the inning and a Bob Carroll bunt single past the mound put runners on first and second to kick off the frame. After a lineout to third for the first out, a wild pitch by Nies moved up the runners and a wild throw on a pickoff to third allowed both runners to score a moments later.
Goodpaster cruised to lower his conference-best ERA to 2.13 while scattering six DC hits. He struck out the side during the fifth as he settled in to retired 15 in a row, a stretch that lasted from the end of the fourth until Hunter Bostater (Ney, Ohio/Fairview) hit a two-out, sinking line drive single in the ninth inning. The only trouble Goodpaster faced as a two-out, base-loaded threat by Defiance in the third inning, but the Hanover hurler escaped the jam with a flyout to right by Josh Vischer (Genoa, Ohio/Genoa) to end the inning.
Nies (Logansport, Ind./Lewis Cass) escaped a bases-loaded spot of his own in the top of the sixth, working around a two-out walk and infield single with a grounder to second. He endured nine hits into the ninth inning in which he did not allow an extra-base hit after Christie's homer until Carroll's leadoff double in ninth. After a Jake Danneman single moved up Carroll, Christie hit a sacrifice fly to left-center to plate Hanover's final run of the game. Nies fired over 130 pitches and total 8.1 innings with six strikeouts and five walks while just two of his four runs were earned.
Game 2 Final: Hanover 6, Defiance 1
Box Score: Click here
Matt Alter (Win, 5-4) provided Hanover another dominant starting performance in game two. Alter sat down 13 straight Defiance batters after Mitchell Roever's (Cincinnati, Ohio/Elder) leadoff single in the first inning, a strand that was broken by a walk to Gunner Gregg (Grayton, Ohio/Oak Harbor) in the fifth. Defiance broke up the shutout bid in the eighth inning after Tyler Dehan (St. Henry, Ohio/St. Henry) tripled with one out and scored on a bloop single to right by Roever. Alter threw eight innings of one-run ball and held DC to just four hits.
The Panthers scored the first six runs of the contest starting with two in the first on a Connar Farnsley double, which made DC starter Blake Bowman (Loss, 0-5) pay for a pair of walks to start the ballgame. The next three runs all scored thanks to Sam Perkins. Later in the fifth, Perkins smacked a two-run single after a triple and hit batter started the inning for Bowman prior to recording the next two outs.
Bowman (Toledo, Ohio/Start) withstood seven hits and five walks to complete 4.2 innings with five strikeouts before giving way to Tyler Sickmiller (Leipsic, Ohio/Leipsic). Sickmiller provided perfect relief over three innings by retiring his first nine hitters until Christie broke up that strand with his second homer of the afternoon, a solo blast over the left-center fence. Jeff Varga (Rockford, Mich./Rockford) tossed a scoreless ninth inning with the help of a runner leaving third early trying to score on a sacrifice fly, but the play resulted in an inning-ending double play.
Roever and Alex Morr each recorded hits in both games while Roever reached base four times total on a walk and three hits on the afternoon.
The Yellow Jackets complete their season with a doubleheader on Sunday at Franklin beginning at 1 p.m.
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