Zanesville baseball falls to Ridgewood in extras

ZANESVILLE – Despite his team leading Ridgewood 3-0 in its home opener Monday at Jay Payton Field, Zanesville baseball coach Dave Balo was never really comfortable with the lead.

"Three runs isn't going to be enough to win this game," he told his team on different occasions.

Balo was right.

The Generals scored three runs in the sixth inning to tie it and added what proved to be the winning run in the eighth inning for a 4-3 victory over the Blue Devils.

It was the season-opener for both schools.

"This game was a classic case of letting a team hang around too long," Balo said. "We gave them chance after chance to get back in it and you can't do that against a good, well-coached team or they will beat you."

Zanesville sent eight batters to the plate in the first with Josh Clark and Zach Rutter each getting an RBI on singles and another run scoring on an error for a 3-0 lead.

The Ridgewood offense remained stagnant throughout the game, but did get some help from the Blue Devils in the sixth.

The first five batters featured two walks, two hit-by-pitches and an error, which led to three runs and a 3-3 tie.

The Generals took their only lead in the eighth on back-to-back doubles from Caleb Tingle and Dillan Shepler, then held strong defensively in the bottom of the inning to seal the win.

Ridgewood coach Chad Lahna was pleased to see his team battle back after struggling at the plate early in the game.

"Once we settled in a little bit and started swinging at good pitches, things starting happening," he said. "We did a good job to get the game tied, then Caleb and Dillan came up with some big hits to help us get the lead."

Even in a loss, Balo was happy to see his team hit the ball hard.

"Honestly I didn't know how we would score the way things were looking in scrimmages," he said. "So for this team to have 10 hits, that's doing pretty well."

But Balo understands that things will have to improve in the field and especially on the base paths if they want to win games.

"We just made too many mistakes," he said. "We had at least five outs on bases and that takes the bat out of a guy's hands, which is something you can't do if you want to win."

jmickeyjr@gannett.com

Twitter: @TribuneJJMickey