By Lori Chase
@LChase_RA
St. BONAVENTURE — In a baseball league where football-score marathons have been more common than pitchers’ duels this season, Olean Oilers starter Mike Tolsma gave the hometown crowd a thrill – and his bullpen a sorely-needed break – on Sunday afternoon.
Shrugging off a leadoff walk by picking off the baserunner, then carrying a no-hitter into the seventh inning, Tolsma fashioned a four-hit gem to pace the Oilers to a 4-2 victory over the Hornell Dodgers in New York Collegiate Baseball League action at Fred Handler Park.
“We needed that one,” Olean coach Bobby Bell said. “We shortened our bullpen today. We didn’t have that many guys – we were actually talking to some of our positional players about maybe throwing if we got into a situation. But Mike stepped up big for us.”
Tolsma, headed to Canisius this fall after two seasons at Erie Community College, needed just 103 pitches for the complete-game win, facing the minimum three batters per inning until Kevin Johnson finally broke up the no-hit bid with a clean single to center field.
“I was just getting ahead all day,” said the 6-foot-5 lefthander, who fired first-pitch strikes to 19 of the 31 batters he faced. “That’s been my biggest issue this year, in terms of walking guys and giving up base hits, so I’m always pitching from behind. Getting ahead was huge today.
“I can’t really ask for a better day – minus maybe not giving up a hit in the seventh,” he added with a smile.
While Hornell starter Jordan Quinn was also pitching well, Olean entered the top of that inning with a 2-0 lead courtesy of left fielder Jon Kemmer, who added to his league-leading RBI total with a bases-loaded walk in the third and a solo homer to right in the sixth.
Tolsma got the first out on a fly ball to left, but following Johnson’s hit, an infield single by Kyle Danford and a walk to NYCBL home run leader Matt Calhoun loaded the bases and drew catcher Steve Pollakov out to the mound for a chat. Tolsma responded with a quick 0-2 count on Luke Feisal, but the Hornell catcher stayed alive, fouling off three consecutive pitches before roping the ball into right field to drive in the Dodgers’ first run of the day. Danford scored easily to tie the game on Will Benenson’s single to center, but a strike from center fielder Thomas Richards to third baseman Mike Scarcello caught Feisal in a rundown, and shortstop Joe Pantano completed an inning-ending double play by firing a fastball to Pollakov, who was waiting for Calhoun at the plate.
“Our defense has got to be, if it’s not the best in the league, it’s got to be one of the top,” said Tolsma. “These guys have played incredible all year. I trust them. Because I don’t strike that many guys out I tell them, ‘Hey, you’re getting your work in today,’ and they just do an incredible job for me. They put up a zero in the error column. I can’t describe anything clearer than that.”
For all the work Hornell did to draw even, it didn’t take Olean long in the bottom half of the inning to regain its two-run margin. After taking ball one from Dodgers reliever Matt Danton, designated hitter Joe Chittester uncorked a bomb to dead center for his first homer of the season, and Richards followed by parking one over the left-field wall to clear out the Oiler dugout again.
“That’s where the momentum turns,” Tolsma said of the back-to-back round-trippers. “When you do something like that, now it’s on me to to go out there and say, ‘All right, they’re not scoring again.’”
From there, Bell said, it was “100 percent” Tolsma’s game the rest of the way.
“He looked awesome,” Bell said. “His pitch count was low, and he still looked like he was under control. He definitely looked like he had his cool, calm, collected attitude out there, so we didn’t even send anyone down to the pen. We weren’t worried about it at all.”
With good reason. The Tonawanda native needed just eight pitches to get out of a 1-2-3 eighth, and after Danford managed to draw a two-out walk in Hornell’s final at-bat, Calhoun grounded to short, with Pantano flipping the ball to second baseman Seth Heck to end the game.
“Hats off to their guy,” Hornell coach Tony Fuller said. “He kept us off balance, he was hitting his spots. Besides that one inning, we were dead most of the day. Hats off to him. He pitched very, very well.”
Combined with Saturday night’s 21-17 win in a slugfest at Wellsville, the weekend split with Hornell pulled the Oilers (14-8) back within a game and a half of the Dodgers (16-7) for the Western Division lead.
“It would’ve been nice to get the one (against Hornell) the other day,” Bell said, “because that would’ve made this one a little bit more relaxing. But because we lost the other day this became a must-win. We needed that just to keep us within reach in the standings, especially now that we’re coming down toward the end, the second half of the season. So that was huge to get that today.”
Notes:
- Although Hornell ended up on the short side of Sunday’s outcome, the news was better for one of its former players. The Seattle Mariners called up Josh Kinney, who pitched for the Dodgers in 1998 following his freshman season at Quincy University, from the Class AAA Tacoma Rainiers and placed him on their 40-man roster.
Josh Kinney, a Port Allegany, Pa., native who earned a World Series ring in 2006 as a member of the St. Louis Cardinals bullpen before ‘Tommy John’ surgery temporarily derailed his career, split the 2011 season between the Chicago White Sox and their Triple-A affiliate, the Charlotte Knights. In 27 appearances for the Rainiers this year, he was 1-0 with three saves and a 2.70 ERA, striking out 38 and walking 11 in 36.2 innings of work.
“Awesome,” Fuller said when told of Kinney’s promotion. “That’s great for the league and great for our town. Our town’s proud of our baseball team, and that’s something to really hold onto.” - Both teams are back in action on Monday for the last time before the July Fourth holiday, with Hornell hosting the Niagara Power (10-9) for a doubleheader beginning at 3 p.m. and Olean welcoming the team formerly known as Rochester Athletes In Action (6-14), newly christened the Lake Ontario Ridgemen, for a 5 p.m. start at Handler Park.
At St. Bonaventure:
Hornell – 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 – 2 4 2
Olean –– 0 0 1 0 0 1 2 0 x – 4 6 0
Quinn (5.1 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 1 ER, 6 SO, 1 BB), Danton (L, 0-3)(2.2 IP, 3 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 SO, 0 BB) and Feisal
Tolsma (W, 3-0)(9 IP, 4 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 7 SO, 2 BB) and Pollakov
HR: Kemmer (5), Chittester (1), Richards (3)
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