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The Cavaliers went into the top of the eighth inning with a 6-1 lead, then sent 15 batters to the plate and scored 10 runs on six hits and two Winona errors to blow the game open.
The Chiefs went down in order in the bottom of the inning to end the game early due to the 10-run rule.
“I don't think we were that far off,” Chiefs coach Ryan Buhler said of the lopsided score. “We were battling with them, hanging right in there, then the wheels kind of came off that last inning. The defense fell a little behind, we made some bad decisions and they hit the ball and took advantage of it.”
Scott Weifenbach provided the Chiefs’ only bright spot on a long night, hitting a solo home run to right field for a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the first. Weifenbach finished 2-for-4 with a home run and a stolen base.
The Chiefs’ lead held until the Cavaliers tied the score 1-1 in the top of the third. Fourteen of Eau Claire’s 16 runs were scored in the sixth and eighth innings combined.
Andy Biezanz started for the Chiefs and struck out four while holding the Cavaliers to five hits in six innings. But Biezanz was hampered by control issues, hitting four batters, walking six more and finishing with six wild pitches. Biezanz was charged with six runs (five earned) and the loss.
“You have days like that,” Buhler said. “It’s baseball, you have mental errors and physical errors. I can handle the physical ones, we just have to clean up the mental ones and go from there.”
Weifenbach’s home run was the only extra-base hit for the Chiefs. The Chiefs’ offensive struggles were compounded by the Cavaliers success at the plate. As the Chiefs went cold, with no hits and just one base runner over the final three innings, the Cavaliers heated up, with nine hits and 14 runs over the final three innings.
“I think we played six really great innings,” Buhler said. “We just had two bad ones that killed us.”
