Chiarodo’s Early Shot, Baugh’s Pitching Lead Tigers Past Alton

ALTON – The Edwardsville High School baseball team remained perfect in the Southwestern Conference Friday afternoon after defeating the Alton Redbirds by a score of 8-1.

A game that was originally scheduled for Thursday was rained out and postponed for a day. The Tigers had won a thrilling 13-8 game in Edwardsville on Tuesday.

The Tigers are the only undefeated team in the SWC. They’ll be coming down to the wire with Belleville East, who sit at 7-1 in the conference. The Lancers split their series with Alton.

Heading into the Edwardsville series, the Redbirds had split their opening conference series with O’Fallon and Belleville East. They beat East St. Louis twice and now lost to Edwardsville twice to sit at 4-4. Only Alton and East have played eight conference games so far.

Hunter Baugh led off the game with a single to center and advanced to third after a botched pick-off attempt at first base. Lucas Krebs then hit into a fielder’s choice, scoring Baugh for an early 1-0 lead. Then Joe Chiarodo stepped up and blasted a line drive over the right field wall, his third home run of the season for the 2-0 lead.

After a 13-8 game back in Edwardsville, Tigers’ head coach Tim Funkhouser wasn’t betting that two runs would be enough to win.

“Well, we needed more,” he said. “We’ve faced [Reid] Murray before, and he’s a great competitor. Alton took some outstanding at-bats the other day. We knew we were going to need more. We wanted to make sure that we continued to add to it during the game.”

Baugh was also Edwardsville’s starting pitcher. After giving up a leadoff single to Nolan Parker, he struck out the next three batters.

Reid Murray, Alton’s ace, went three-up, three-down to start the second.

In the top of the third, a potential game-changing play was reversed to Edwardsville’s chagrin.

With the bases loaded, Augustus Jones stepped up to the plate and hit a ball hard toward third baseman Deon Harrington. Harrington missed the throw to first, allowing three runs to score. But Alton head coach Scott Harper was quick to have a chat with the umpires, and then the ball was deemed foul, sending everyone back to their original positions. Jones then hit into a double play to get Murray out of the jam.

Anderson Kaufmann started the bottom of the third, getting hit by a pitch. Parker then hit a sacrifice bunt to move him over to second. Deon Harrington hit into a fielder’s choice, and Kaufmann was out at third. Then Ayden Calvert took a two-out walk. Harrington stole third and then scored on a wild pitch past the catcher, Max Waltenberger, to make it 2-1. Carson Bristow then struck out swinging to end the frame.

Nick Chiarodo singled on a bunt, scoring Greyson Rathgeb in the top of the fourth. Baugh then got hit by a pitch to load the bases. It didn’t get any better for Murray, who walked Lucas Krebs to score Logan Porter. Connor Aumend hit an RBI single to score Baugh and make it a 6-1 ball game.

The Tigers tacked on two more in the seventh for good measure as they outhit Alton 12-2 on the day.

“I think our guys are really taking mature at-bats, learned a lot of lessons throughout the year, and you can see the guys are just expanding their game and kind of settling in,” Funkhouser said.

“Baugh did a good job of mixing,” Harper said. “We had a few opportunities, but just not enough. We struggled to put things together and tack on. It’s tough to match when they get bigger innings and crooked numbers in their three scoring innings.”

Baugh went 5.2 innings and struck out seven, allowing just two hits.

“He’s been outstanding for us,” Funkhouser said of Baugh. “We have a lot of different guys that are throwing well. We told our guys early in the year, we’re looking for that consistency, et cetera, and once we get to different points in the year, we might only play two or three games in a week, and it’s going to be harder to get innings, but when you get out there, show out. And it’s been harder to get other guys work because [Baugh’s] gone deep, Joe [Chiarodo] went pretty deep the other day, but those are all good things.”

Funkhouser was just happy to remain undefeated in the conference against a tough Alton team.

“They’ve split with a couple of teams already in the conference. They’ve got some arms, they’ve got some bats, they play good defense. So, there’s a lot of great attributes of any Scott Harper team,” Funkhouser said.

“He does a great job with them, so yeah, for us to be able to move forward in the conference, be in the position we are, we just have to continue to get better overall, but I really like the way we’re making progress.”

The Tigers started the season with a 7-1 record before losing five straight, four games in the extremely tough National High School Invitational in North Carolina. They’ve since won seven in a row to sit at 14-6 on the season.

Edwardsville will be back in conference action on Tuesday and Thursday against Belleville West.

It was Alton’s fourth straight loss as the Redbirds are now 13-10.

Alton will play at Gibault Catholic on Monday and then play a Tuesday/Thursday series with Collinsville.

“We’re taking steps forward, we can play better than we played,” Harper said. “We’ve just got to continue to compete. This is a tough conference; none of them are easy.”

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