Lakers Bunt Their Way To Final Weekend

The Faribault Lakers used small ball to pick up a 4-2 win over Luverne Sunday night and advance to the final weekend of the Minnesota State Amateur Baseball Tournament.  Matt Lane fanned 11 batters while throwing 119 pitches.  89 for strikes and was 27 of 35 first pitch strikes. The Redbirds cranked out 10 hits.  Lane also started the scoring with his bat in the bottom of the first, smashing a double that scored Jack Helgeson who walked  and scored all the way from first base.  Luverne scored two runs in the top of the second to take the lead and the Lakers answered with a run of their own in the bottom of the second.  Adam Jensen led the inning with a infield single and scored on an error.  In fact 3 of Faribault's 4 runs would score on errors.  The game stayed tied until the 7th when Jensen would lead another inning with a single.  Dylan Valentyn laid down his second attempted sacrifice bunt when the pitcher slipped and threw the ball wide and he was safe.  Faribault would follow that with a bunt by Jake Stocker that would score Jensen from third, Adam Kline then bunted resulting in another error by Luverne scoring Valentyn, Blake Langerud got on base after a throwing error by the pitcher and stole second so runners were at second and third with one out, but Faribault couldn't get the timely hit.  They would strand runners at second and third again in the 8th inning with one out.  Luverne's pitcher Brian Bauning was especially hard for the righties to hit with his sidearm delivery.  He also had 11 strikeouts and walked one.  That walk did score.  Faribault left 7 runners on base and all were in scoring position.  Luverne would leave six and only one was in scoring position.  Matt Lane, Adam Jensen and Adam Kline were our Faribault State Farm Insurance Agents Faribault players of the game.  Jensen collected three hits, Kline had two very nice defensive plays at third and laid down a couple of nice bunts leading to runs and Lane continues to pitch particularly well with runners on base.  The Lakers will  play Lastrup Saturday night at 7:30 in Belle Plaine in their next State contest.  If they win that game they would have to play twice on Sunday to get to Monday's Class C State title game.  Lastrup downed Owatonna on Saturday with a walk-off homer in the 11th inning.  Before the Faribault game FHS graduate Nate Rost pitched a gem against Long Prairie for New Market.  Rost tossed a one hitter throwing just 82 pitches in 9 innings while striking out nine.  The Muskies play 7:30pm Saturday in Jordan against Sobieski.  The DRS League is doing very well with St. Patrick, New Market and Faribault all advancing to the final weekend in the 48 team single elimination tournament.  It was awesome to see so many Faribault fans sporting their Laker State Tournament shirts.