Third baseman twice comes in to pitch relief to lead Forreston baseball to sectional final
Third base to pitcher to third base to pitcher. Sounds like a run-down at home plate. It’s not. It’s Brendan Greenfield’s trip through the lineup Wednesday that has Forreston on the verge of winning only its second sectional baseball title in school history.
Greenfield pitched in relief — twice — to hold down Lena-Winslow in a 10-4 victory in the Class 2A Forreston Sectional semifinals.
Greenfield first pitched in the third, just after Le-win put its first four runners on base in the second but was held to one run because of a double play after a runner left too early on a potential sacrifice fly. He held Le-Win scoreless for two innings, then moved back to third after the leadoff batter in the fifth reached on an error. He came back in the sixth after Le-Win scored four runs in the fifth and threw another 1 ⅔ innings before being pulled with one out to go to keep his pitch count low enough so that he can pitch again in Saturday’s sectional final against East Dubuque (24-7).
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It was the first time this year Forreston coach Mike McClelland has asked a player to come in and pitch twice in the same game.
“It’s just a feel for what’s going on. Kendall (Erdmann) came in. He’s been lights out for us. He’s been closing off every game. They had his number. It wasn’t like he walked a bunch of guys. They just hit him.
“I figured, ‘Greenfield is pitching really well. Let’s just go back to him.’ It was just spur of the moment. It wasn’t a plan.”
It was a good plan. Lena-Winslow (18-7) seemed to hit everyone else Forreston threw Saturday. The Panthers banged out 11 hits. When Greenfield left for the final time with two outs, the bases empty and Forreston one out from victory, Le-Win loaded the bases before flying out to end the game on a full count.
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“Brendan was huge,” said Erdmann, who was 2-for-3 with two RBIs, two runs scored and a game-opening triple. “He’s been struggling a little bit, but now he is locked in.”
Forreston (24-8) had 13 hits itself. Carson Akins had four RBIs and two runs scored, while Greenfield, Akins, Erdmann, Brady Gill and Kadin Ganz each had two hits.
And even the player who played two positions twice wasn’t the only chess piece McClelland moved around.
“We just know we always have to be ready for whatever,” said Greenfield, one of nine Greenfield cousins who have starred for Forreston baseball and softball teams the past few years. “Just keep going. It was good. The kid who started at first base (Alec Schoenhoven), he played five positions tonight. We’re always ready to do whatever.”
Le-Win’s three-run fifth — which cut its deficit to 5-4 — could have been far bigger but Aiden Wild lined into a double-play right at first base.
“That was big,” Greenfield said. “It felt like momentum was ready to switch to their side.”
“We hit it hard. Our runner froze. That’s what we teach them to do,” Le-Win coach Nick Werhane said. “You couldn’t do anything about that. We had some bad luck all game. We hit the ball hard and they made plays. Our balls didn’t find holes and theirs did. That’s how baseball goes.
“But we said all week in preparation, if you give them a little bit of a crack, they are going to bust it open and it’s going to be trouble for us. And they did just that. We put pressure on them. We had opportunities. We just didn’t get it done.”
This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Brendan Greenfield pitches twice to lead Forreston baseball vs Le-Win
