BASEBALL: P'ville-Du Quoin gives one away to Fairview Heights
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[Pinckneyville-Du Quoin will now need four straight wins to become champions after letting a win slip away against Fairview Heights on Tuesday, dropping into the losers' bracket of the Senior American Legion Baseball 5th Division Tournament with a 5-4 loss despite leading with four outs to go.
Posts 2504 & 647 will meet Carrier Mills at noon on Wednesday with elimination at stake. Fairview Heights and Effingham will meet at 7:00 p.m. in the finals of the winners' bracket.
"In a tournament like this the way the format is, one loss and it's incredibly hard," said Pinckneyville-Du Quoin coach Sean Patrick. "That was a game that we had and we 100% gave that game away. I'm just disappointed for us."
2504/647 led 4-3 in the bottom of the eighth inning with Brett Warchol on in relief of starter Kyle Mueller. Warchol whiffed Post 978's Vincent Birk, one of six strikeouts for the right-hander, but with one out Logan Reno doubled as the tying run.
Warchol struck out Alex Siddle next, then Aaron Krummrich lined a ball to right field that just got by a diving Mueller. The ball got to the wall for a two-out triple that tied the game at 4-4.
The next batter, Darius Box, struck out swinging on a ball in the dirt. Box took off for first and rather than attempt to throw him out, P-DQ catcher Travis Chapman tried to nail Krummrich who was inching home from third. Luke Miller couldn't handle the throw, which traveled far enough away for Krummrich to score the go-ahead run.
"(Warchol) did enough to save that game, and Kyle (Mueller) did enough to win," Patrick said. "We hit just enough. Of the five runs they scored, I think we gave them four. We had to earn all four of ours with our bats, and we gave them four of their five, we gave it away. That can't happen on a stage like this."
Bryant Shute led off the game with a home run to put Pinckneyville-Du Quoin on top, then Mueller cranked a solo shot in the fifth to make it 2-0.
A walk to Birk and an error on a single to left field by Reno put one run on the board for Fairview Heights in the bottom of the fifth, then Reno later came home on a passed ball to tie the game.
2504/647 came right back in the top of the sixth to reclaim the lead on a one-out double by C.J. Opp that brought in Nate Boss and Warchol.
Mueller began to run out of gas in the seventh, hitting Siddle and walking Krummrich before giving up an RBI single to Box. Mueller then walked Sam Hopkins to load the bases when Patrick made the move to Warchol, who struck out Danny Hughes and Joel Yates before getting Darin Pitts to fly out to left field to escape the jam without further damage.
Mueller gave up just seven hits, but also walked seven men in his six-plus innings on the hill. Warchol took the loss despite striking out six of the nine men he faced.
"I think we had an opportunity to send a message for schools of 400-500 kids to beat a team that draws from schools of 2,000-4,000," Patrick said. "That's just a win I would have like to have had, I know they would have liked to have had it, unfortunately it wasn't our day today."
Shute (3-4, HR) and Boss (3-4, 2 2B, R) each had three hits for Pinckneyville-Du Quoin; Opp (2-4, 2B, 2 RBI), Warchol (1-4, R), Mueller (1-4, HR) had the others.
Patrick said he plans to start Warchol on the mound against Carrier Mills on Wednesday.
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