Roseburg baseball splits with Sheldon, tied for first in SWC

By Knight Jarecki

EUGENE — Senior Luke Robbins murmured the words “job’s not finished” in the dugout after the Roseburg Indians won the first game of a Southwest Conference doubleheader 4-3 over the Sheldon Irish on Saturday afternoon at Sheldon High School.

Unfortunately for Robbins and the Indians, the job was still not finished after Game 2 as the Indians missed out on an opportunity to punch their ticket to the postseason with a 2-1 loss.

Despite the split, Roseburg (15-7, 10-5 SWC) still ended the day in first place in the conference race as the Indians hold the tiebreaker over North Medford (15-7, 10-5 SWC), which is even with the Tribe following a sweep of South Eugene Saturday. Roseburg won two of three from the Black Tornado after splitting a twin bill last weekend at Jim McAbee Field.

“I like that we are leading the league,” Roseburg junior Paxton Burke said. “But at the same time, we really needed this. A lot of us are pretty ticked off, but we just gotta battle next week.”

Roseburg, which entered the day ranked No. 5 in the Class 6A OSAA power rankings, is still in a great spot to make the playoffs, but the split certainly put a sting in the Indians’ plans for separation atop of the standings.

Saturday’s win in Game 1 wasn’t easy. The Indians found themselves in an early hole, trailing 3-0 after one inning before scratching and crawling their way back to take the lead in the fifth and hold on for the one-run victory.

Senior Jake Johnson settled in after the first inning and only allowed one more hit the remainder of the way, finishing with 10 strikeouts in 6 2/3 innings to record his third outing of 10 or more punchouts this season.

“I was struggling getting a feel for the off-speed pitches early on, but started to get a feel for that towards the end,” Johnson said. “(After the first inning) I didn’t want anyone to get on base ever again. I just have the mentality that after a bad inning I just refocus and do what I gotta do in the dugout and then come back into the game and put up zeros.”

Roseburg scored two runs in the third and one in the fourth, highlighted by two-run singles from Burke in each inning to even the score at three.

“I was kind of nervous my first AB,” Burke said. “I got to have that killer mentality and that’s what happened (in my second AB) and I started swinging it better.”

With the game knotted at three in the fifth, freshman Danner Wertz picked up his second single of the game — and one of his biggest hits of the season — to bring home Cal Robbins to give Roseburg a 4-3 lead.

“I saw a curveball and changeup on the first two pitches and then I saw a fastball up and away and swung away,” Wertz said. “When I rounded first base, I was pretty happy.”

Dane St. Clair entered the game with two outs in the seventh and got the final out for a second time this week after doing so against West Salem on Wednesday.

Game 2 was similar to the opener in terms of the competitive nature.

Roseburg scored its only run on a Wertz sacrifice fly in the fourth. The freshman shut down the Irish through five innings, only allowing three hits before things went sideways in the sixth.

With two outs and runners on the corners, Sheldon’s Asher Olson hit a soft dribbler to short and a slight bobble by Burke allowed the tying run to come in and score for the Irish.

Roseburg threatened with two runners in scoring position in the seventh, but left both runners stranded and the Irish (11-10, 9-7) walked it off in the bottom half of the inning on a Chase Colling RBI single that knocked in Parker Edwards. Edwards led off the inning with a walk and advanced into scoring position on a sacrifice hit.

Wertz allowed just the one earned run in six innings, while Sheldon’s Eli Wallace pitched 6 2/3 innings of one-run baseball before Edwards came in for the final out in the seventh to pick up the win.

Roseburg is scheduled to host South Eugene at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday.

First Game

Roseburg 002 110 0 — 4 12 1

Sheldon 300 000 0 —3 4 0

Johnson, St. Clair (7) and Bowers; E. Colling, Welch (5) and Olson. W — Johnson (7-1). L — Colling. 2B — St. Clair (R), C. Robbins (R), Coleman (R).

Second Game

Roseburg 000 100 0 — 1 3 2

Sheldon 000 001 1 — 2 6 0

Wertz and Bowers; Wallace, Edwards (7) and Olson. W — Edwards. L — Wertz (5-2).