After beating conference foe St. Charles West by 11 runs earlier this season, the Warrenton Warriors dropped a home game against St. Charles West by 10 runs Monday.
Warrenton was shutout in a 10-0 loss to St. Charles West Monday. Warrenton trailed 5-0 after two innings.
“We weren’t ready to play,” Warrenton coach Eric Burle said. “I mean we made a couple effort type plays in the field that we just didn’t make the plays on....You can’t be booting the ball. You can’t be giving them extra bases through walks and stuff like that. Yeah, defensively, we were on our heels and not looking at hunting outs.”
Warrenton did not score a run on St. Charles West pitcher Josh Newell. Newell struck out 13 Warrenton batters in seven innings. He allowed two hits and walked one Warrenton batter in the game. Warrenton scored eight earned runs off Newell in Warrenton’s 15-4 win over St. Charles West earlier this season.
“He’s a senior playing a bunch of sophomores and a freshman,” Burle said. “So I mean that had a little bit to do with it. He’s got some pride and we kind of took it to him last time. So he’s got enough pride to have some maturity and whatever to handle it. He’s in the strike zone. We took way too many strikes. We took just too many pitches in the zone. We weren’t being aggressive enough.”
Caleb Clark got Warrenton’s first hit of the game to lead off the fourth inning. Warrenton mounted a threat in the fifth inning. Joe Goldsmith singled with one out in the inning. Goldsmith advanced to third after Austin Haas reached on an error. Newell recorded back-to-back strikeouts to get out of the inning without allowing a Warrenton run.
Despiting falling to Union 4-3 last week, Burle liked the team’s effort in the game. The Warriors led the game going into the bottom of the seventh inning before losing the lead late. They played the game without third baseman Kannon Hibbs. Hibbs returned to the lineup in Monday’s loss to St. Charles West.
“We competed. We battled,” Burle said. “Union’s a really good team. They were undefeated and I think they were ranked in the top-10 in Class 5 and we had a chance...But they really battled in that game. Had our chances. Kind of beat ourselves a little bit in that game.”
The loss against St. Charles West was Warrenton’s third straight loss.
“We got to right the ship a little bit,” Burle said. “We kind of lost our mojo a little bit. So they just got to figure it out.”
Warrenton snapped the losing streak with a 4-3 win over Bowling Green Tuesday.
Warrenton is scheduled to begin district tournament competition Monday. They are scheduled to play against McCluer at 1 p.m. Monday. The game will be played at Fort Zumwalt East High School.