Oakville boys seeking to turn things around

By STEPHEN GLOVER

For the Call

If the Oakville Senior High baseball team wants to win a Suburban South Con-ference championship, it needs to turn things around now.

“What’s discouraging is that our losses are blowouts,” head coach Rick Seim told the Call. “Any bit of diversity in a game just sinks us.”

The Tigers (2-4, 0-1 Suburban South) grabbed their second win of the season with a 14-9 shootout against Mehlville last Thursday. Oakville fell behind 3-0 after the top of the first but replied in the bottom of the inning with a six run outburst.

The Tigers added one run in the second and three in the fifth along with four in the sixth as they hammered out 14 hits in the winning effort.

“I was so happy with that win because we were down 3-0 after the top of the first,” Seim said.

Grabbing the win for the Tigers was sophomore starting pitcher Andy Marks, who struggled in five innings pitched. Marks gave up seven runs on seven hits as he struck out six batters and walked three. Marks did start the sixth inning but was replaced by Mark Lee who finished the final two innings of the game.

“Andy did settle down a bit after the first inning,” Seim said. “I probably should have gone with my instinct and started a fresh pitcher in the top of the sixth.”

Junior short stop Ryan Gray was productive at the plate as he racked up three hits and drove in two runs. Gray recorded two doubles and one home run against the Panthers while receiving one walk. Seim believes that the sophomore is making a name for himself by hitting in the team’s nine slot in the lineup.

“Ryan’s a pretty good nine hole hitter,” Seim said. “His solo home run in the sixth inning really got things started for us. In a game like that, you hope he gains some confidence and goes on from there.”

The Tigers didn’t have much time to enjoy the win as they experienced a 13-4 drumming by Parkway North the following day.

“We gave up a run in the first but ended up scoring two in the bottom of the first,” Seim said. “To his credit, Mark Reeder got better as the game went on which hurt us.”

Reeder, a senior starting pitcher for the Vikings, threw a complete game of seven innings in which he gave up four runs on 12 hits and struck out five batters.

Oakville’s Eric Brewer received the loss as he gave up 11 runs on 14 hits in five innings pitched. The junior did strike out two batters, while walking one in the losing effort.

“Eric’s got to be our workhorse this season,” Seim said. “We got five innings out of him, but they were long and hard in-nings.”

Oakville returns to action at 4:15 p.m. Wednesday as the Tigers play host to Seckman in an important Suburban South Conference game. The Tigers got away with a 12-11 win last season over the Jaguars and Seim believes that Oakville needs to play a more solid game if they want to contend for the conference championship.

“We’re 0-1 in the conference and we need to get some wins,” Seim said. “Seck-man is always tough and they have a few wins under their belt. Next week, our schedule is really going to get tough.”