Grayhounds sweep Fort Madison

BURLINGTON — The big innings went against Fort Madison High School’s baseball team in Monday’s doubleheader loss to Burlington at Community Field.
Bloodhounds coach Albert Schinstock would like to have a few go his team’s way one of these days.
The Grayhounds swept the doubleheader — 11-1 in the first game and 7-4 in the second game — by putting together three innings with big numbers.
It’s something Schinstock would like to see out of his offense.
“We’ve had our chances in the last two weeks,” he said. “And we just can’t get the big hits when we need them.”
Burlington (8-2 overall, 5-0 Southeast Conference) had in the first game a four-run first inning when nine batters came to the plate, and a six-run fifth with 10 batters. The Grayhounds then took control of the second game with a six-run fifth in which 10 batters came to the plate.
The Bloodhounds had just three hits in the first game, and then left 13 runners on base in the second game.

“It’s getting pretty frustrating,” Schinstock said. “You can see it on the players’ faces. We had one inning against Central Lee in the last two weeks where we scored five (runs). Hitting is contagious, and right now, we're not hitting.”
Fort Madison’s lone first-game run came in the first inning, when Reece Huey scored on a double-steal attempt. All of the Bloodhounds’ hits in that game were singles, and after the first inning did not get another baserunner into scoring position.
Fort Madison (2-12, 2-3) was a little more opportunistic in the second game. The Bloodhounds took advantage of four Burlington errors to score two runs in the fourth inning and two runs in the fifth — Oliver Schelich’s single up the middle accounted for the fifth-inning runs — for a 4-1 lead.
But the Bloodhounds couldn’t hold the margin. Michael Kantzavelos’ two-run single and Caden Zaugg’s sacrifice fly tied the game, then Burlington scored the next three runs with two outs on singles by Brody Guernsey, Dylan Chenoweth and Cohen Schroeder.
Fort Madison had runners on second and third with one out in the sixth inning and couldn’t score, and had a runner on third with one out in the seventh and didn’t score.
“It always seems like it’s the same thing,” Schinstock said. “An error prolongs an inning, then we’re not consistently throwing strikes and falling behind in the count. One thing leads to the next, and we can’t score runs to manage that.”
Fort Madison, which has lost its last six games, plays at Washington on Thursday.
“The message is pretty simple — we’ve got to get over the hump right now,” Schinstock said. “It's like we're finding every way we can to lose, but at some point we're going to get out of that and turn it around. We’ve just got to keep the morale up.”