Prep Baseball: Roseburg drops SWC doubleheader to Sheldon

The Roseburg Indians suffered a pair of frustrating losses to the Sheldon Irish in a Southwest Conference baseball doubleheader Saturday at Champion Car Wash Field.

Sheldon finished off a series sweep against Roseburg with 10-3 and 10-5 victories. It’s the first conference series loss of the season for the Indians.

“Frustrating for sure,” Roseburg coach Troy Thompson said. “We had opportunities in both games, but unfortunately we just couldn’t seem to kind of get out of our own way in a lot of situations.”

Thompson said Roseburg struggled with a number of errors and mental mistakes that Sheldon capitalized on during the twin bill.

“We sure didn’t play very sharp or very crisp today and it showed up, and credit Sheldon for putting on pressure and being aggressive and forcing us to do things that we didn’t do very well,” Thompson added.

In Game 1, the Irish scored in every inning except for the fifth and every run except for the last came with two outs.

Keaton Welch was a force at the plate for Sheldon (11-7, 8-4 SWC). The sophomore was 3-for-4 and drove in four runs on three two-out singles. Andrew Roadman and Cam Thomas also plated runs for the Irish.

Roseburg (10-6, 6-3) scored runs in the second, third and fourth innings, but couldn’t string together enough hits to start a rally. Danner Wertz was 3-for-3 in the game with two RBIs. Mason Young also plated a run with a sacrifice fly.

The Indians took a 2-0 lead in Game 2. Nick Ruiz pushed both runs across with a one-out single in the second inning, but Sheldon quickly rallied by scoring four runs in the third inning off of Roseburg starter Christian Korba.

Chad Turner had the big hit in the inning, a triple that scored two runs and gave the Irish a 3-2 advantage. Sheldon didn’t trail again the rest of the day. Turner also had an RBI single in the sixth that helped Sheldon push across five runs, stretching a 5-4 lead into a 10-4 edge.

In the end, the box score will show Roseburg pitchers had more strikeouts (18) than Sheldon’s (eight) and the Indians had twice as many extra base hits (six) as the Irish (three). Yet, none of that seemed to have an impact as the Irish were relentlessly aggressive on the bases and difficult to put out.

“Offensively, we had a few good swings, but we can’t give up the amount of runs we did today and think we’re going to be in ball games with minimal hits and minimal runners on,” Thompson said.

The losses dropped Roseburg to third place in the Southwest Conference, a half-game behind second-place Sheldon. The Indians trail first place Willamette by two games.

Roseburg hosts South Medford for a Southwest Conference game at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday at Champion Car Wash Field.

First Game

Sheldon 211 203 1 — 10 12 2

Roseburg 011 100 0 — 3 9 2

Roadman, Welch (7) and Colling; Coleman, Glasser (5), Coate (7) and Bowers. W — Roadman. L — Coleman (1-1). 2B — Wallace (S), Coleman (R), Ruiz (R). 3B — Thomas (S), Korba (R).

Second Game

Sheldon 004 105 0 — 10 9 0

Roseburg 020 020 1 — 5 8 2

Wallace, Welch (5) and Colling; Korba, Burke (6) and Bowers. W — Wallace. L — Korba (2-2). 2B — Black (R), Korba (R), Coate (R). 3B — Turner (S).