DEVILS LAKE — You saw a little of just about everything if you were in attendance at DLYA Field on Friday night.
You saw 11 combined errors. You saw a pitcher bring a no-hitter into the fifth inning. There were bombs, rallies, good pitching and a whole lot of weirdness as Devils Lake pulled off a stunning 13-12 walk-off win over Park River Post 147 in the second game of a doubleheader.
“Jeez Louise,” Devils Lake coach Eric Nygaard said. “I asked the kids if there was a conspiracy that they started creating before the game started. But wow, it was nice to see our kids kind of behind the eight-ball there a little bit and just putting strings of hits together.”
What looked like a dud to complete the regular season turned into one of the Storm’s most heroic efforts all summer. It was their 11th straight win.
A perfect segue into the postseason.
Let’s break it down.
Park River has spout of early ugliness
The story early on was that Park River was playing a very sloppy baseball game.
The Pirates committed six errors in the first three innings. In fact, it took only three batters into the bottom of the first before each of Park River’s middle infielders had made an error.
The Pirates’ first baseman had an unfortunate second inning, dropping a popup and later making a throwing error after stepping on first base for an out. The shortstop made an error that extended Devils Lake’s lead to 4-0.
It was all Storm early on. They took advantage of Park River’s sloppiness and had a 6-1 lead going to the fifth. The Pirates wound up making seven total errors unofficially.
Ben Larson has a good, but bad, but also kind of good outing
Larson’s evening on the mound was a real oddity.
Devils Lake’s super-senior right-hander was a little wild to start things off, walking back-to-back hitters in the first inning. A short time later, one look at the scoreboard showed he hadn’t allowed a hit through the fourth. He had a 1-2-3 second and struck out the side in the fourth.
Park River did score against him, though, in the third inning. It was an unearned run because of a leadoff error.
Larson’s dreams of a no-hitter were spoiled by back-to-back singles to lead off the fifth inning.
Two batters later, he appeared to induce an inning-ending 6-4-3 double play — but the call at first base was overturned after a brief deliberation by the umpires.
That decision ended up costing Larson and the Storm four runs.
The ever-talented shortstop Mason Palmer made an error after putting a little too much on a throw, and an unlucky infield hit brought in another. Two more runs scored on an error at third base.
It was suddenly 6-5.
So Larson, despite holding Park River without a hit through four innings, ended up getting tagged for five runs. But precisely zero of those runs were earned. It was an altogether strange outing, hard to simply quantify as “good” or “bad.” Five runs and three walks in five innings doesn’t sound great on its own, but zero earned runs over five innings does sound quite good.
Things get ugly for Devils Lake
If Park River’s sloppiness defined the early innings, then Devils Lake’s own mishaps set the pace for the middle and late innings.
As discussed, the Storm’s defense was responsible for five unearned runs against Larson. Devils Lake committed one error in the third inning, two in the fifth and then another in the seventh while Tayven Wiberg was pitching. The Storm stumbled, fell and then stumbled some more as a 6-1 lead became a 6-6 tie, and then before they knew it, they were trailing 12-6.
All of the momentum was going the Pirates’ way. They scratched together a two-out rally against Wiberg in the sixth, with a triple and a single, to tie it. Then Wiberg, who came in with a 2.29 ERA over 19 2/3 innings this summer, couldn’t get an out in the seventh as the first eight Park River batters reached base. His own throwing error gave the Pirates the lead.
People in the stands began packing up their stuff and heading home. The 10-game win streak looked just about over.
Not if Will Heilman has anything to say about it
Heilman led off the bottom of the seventh and casually smashed his second home run of the summer.
It seemed fairly inconsequential at the time. The score was still 12-7. When asked if he expected to be batting again, Heilman said, “Not really, to be honest.”
The next two batters made outs.
Devils Lake trailed by five runs with two outs in the seventh and nobody on base. Starter Noah Troftgruben finally exited the game at this point; despite Devils Lake’s early runs — which were largely error-fueled — he put forth a strong effort, throwing 101 pitches over 6 2/3 innings. He only allowed two earned runs.
But just as inexplicably as Park River rallied against Wiberg, Devils Lake did the same to Pirates reliever Wyatt Carlson, who had come out of the bullpen in the first game as well.
Cayden McCarthy, swinging a good bat all night, hit a single. Ben Brodina and Wiberg reached to load the bases.
Back to the top of the order it went.
Taydon Triepke had gone 0-for-4 after reaching base four times in the opener. He lined a single the other way, scoring two runs. Max Palmer lined another single to left field to make it 12-10.
You could hear the dugout getting a little louder, realizing it was possible to come all the way back and win this. An onlooker pointed out that Devils Lake had been hitting well with two outs.
Mason Palmer then hit one deep in the hole. It scored one guaranteed run, and his brother Max came around to score after a throwing error on the play. That tied it.
So it came back to Heilman, who thought he’d taken his final at-bat nine batters ago.
Heilman said his approach was to “stay simple, and get a pitch that I can hit and put it in play.”
He got ahead in the count 3-1. After fouling a couple off, he hit another ball towards deep shortstop, in a similar spot as Mason Palmer’s.
Throwing him out was a fruitless challenge. Heilman dove headfirst into first base anyway. He had just won the game.
“Probably one of the top feelings I’ve had in baseball,” Heilman said.
He was the last of seven consecutive Storm batters to reach, all with two outs.
“That was probably the most wild comeback I’ve ever seen because three-fourths of it was all done with two outs,” Heilman said. “Our morale was pretty low going into that inning.”
Whether you were on the winning or losing side of this roller coaster, the game was a spectacle to behold. Baseball is a sport where you can often see things you’ve never seen before, no matter how many thousands of games you’ve watched.
That game fit the bill. And it’ll give Devils Lake a good boost of energy heading into the region tournament.