BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS

Sports Editor, RTC

Carson Harness Logan Mollenkopf Tucker Woolever

CULVER — Caston sophomore Carson Harness’ offseason work on his pitching mechanics is paying off, and against host Culver Thursday, he showed he is also becoming quite the productive hitter.

Harness pitched a three-hitter with 11 strikeouts, and he added two hits and three RBIs at the plate to lead the Comet baseball team to a 17-1 win over host Culver Thursday in the first game of a two-game series.

Caston improved to 9-3 overall and 7-0 in the Hoosier North. Culver, who was coming off Jonas McCuen’s no-hitter against Elkhart Christian Monday, dropped to 1-6, 0-5.

Defense was critical. Caston did not commit an error while Culver had seven, all after the third inning.

Caston continued to rely on their youth. Of their 16 hits, nine of them came from freshmen. That included four hits from leadoff hitter Logan Mollenkopf, two hits each from Parker Zimpleman and Tucker Woolever and a hit off the bench from London Herd.

Sophomore Eli Holloway also had two hits.

Culver senior Cam Whitworth tried to keep Caston off-balance with a variety of off-speed pitches.

“I thought we hit the ball all seven innings well against him,” Caston coach Blake Mollenkopf said. “Our approach was to hit strikes in the zone. His curve ball – he called it an eephus, and their coaches did – so it was really slow. You had stay back on it, but he threw it for a strike, which keeps you off-balance. So our goal was to stay off it until you get two strikes and try to hit the fastball.

“They’re well-improved defensively, and they’re doing a really good job. They’re upbeat. The things they do are just different. So we knew it would be a good ballgame, and we just needed to stay persistent with what we were doing to stretch it out.”

And the pressure of Caston’s offense affected Culver’s defense, according to Culver coach Shane Lowry.

“I just think with our starting pitcher Cam, a little unorthodox, good hitters from Caston get through the lineup a few times, and they see what we’re trying to do, and they just hit the ball really hard in pressure situations,” Lowry said. “Two errors that I can remember on the shortstop there were just trying to be too quick and fundamentally not trying to get the out and trying to be more athletic. So it’s hard to criticize something there when you’re trying to make two (outs) but you need to get that one. We booted it, and in certain situations, that led to big innings.”

Culver scored first on back-to-back doubles from McCuen and Hunter Albert in the first inning, but they did not have a baserunner after the third inning. Mixing his fastball and curve, Harness retired 14 consecutive batters to end the game.

Harness worked on his mechanics during the offseason. Ideally, the ball comes out of the same arm slot on every pitch, which makes it difficult for the opposing hitter to decipher whether they are getting the fastball or the curve.

“I started working on better pitching form, like pushing off the mound faster and with more power and getting better arm slots and getting more consistent with that,” Harness said. “All that were big parts to pitching.”

Lowry complimented Harness’ mound work as well.

“Blake says he’s their number one, so he’s got a curve ball that bites,” Lowry said. “And we’ve been working on hitting curve balls in practice, throwing them off our new pitching machine and coach throwing curve balls just so they could see it. First week, we weren’t prepared for it, and that was just a brutal stretch there of five games in six days with two conference bookend matchups against Pioneer and Winamac. That’s tough for any team.

“We’ve grown there. Putting the bat on the ball and putting it in play. We’ve cut down on our strikeouts. I think 40% of our strikeouts were looking, and that’s getting better. We’re taking little successes along the way.”

Whitworth scattered three hits and held a 1-0 lead after two innings.

In the third, Logan Mollenkopf led off with a bunt single, stole second, advanced to third on Eli Holloway’s groundout and scored on Gavin Mollenkopf’s groundout to short with McCuen making a nifty 360-degree spin before making an accurate throw to Albert at first base.

Caston took the lead in the fourth. Whitworth hit Harness with a pitch to lead off. He then appeared to have Harness picked off, but as he whirled to first, Harness took off, and the throw was wild for an error, and Harness hustled all the way to third.

Two batters later, Woolever’s sacrifice fly to center – Caleb McCuen made a nice twisting catch going back on the ball – scored Harness to give Caston a 2-1 lead.

Caston then scored six in the fifth inning to go up 8-1. Holloway had an RBI single to score Logan Mollenkopf, and when the throw home missed the cutoff man, Holloway advanced to second.

Noah Herd singled to right to score Holloway, and Parker Zimpleman singled past the drawn-in infield to score Noah Herd to make it 5-1.

With runners on second and third and the infield playing in, Woolever reached on an error by the third baseman, which scored Harness and Zimpleman. Lane Halterman’s RBI single to right capped the inning.

Harness’ RBI single in the sixth made it 9-1, and Caston tacked on eight more runs against Whitworth and reliever Albert in the seventh.

Gavin Mollenkopf’s grounder with the bases loaded was booted for an error, and when the throw home to try and force Drew McGrew at the plate deflected off his foot and to the backstop, Logan Mollenkopf also scored on the double error. Harness’ two-run single and Woolever’s two-run double to deep left made it 15-1 before RBI singles from London Herd and Logan Mollenkopf.

“First at-bat was a little rough getting used to a slower arm, but throughout the game, it got more dialed in,” Harness said of his hitting. “We have a very good hitting team. I’m very happy with what we have, and I think we can easily win a lot of games if we get into high-run games.”

The same teams will meet at Caston today.

In other Hoosier North action, North Miami scored two runs in the bottom of the seventh to beat Winamac 2-1. North Miami (5-0) and Caston are the only remaining unbeaten teams in the conference, and they will meet May 16 at Caston and May 20 at North Miami.

Caston 17, Culver 1

Caston 001 161 8 – 17 16 0

Culver 100 000 0 – 1 3 7

WP – Carson Harness (7 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 11 K)

LP – Cam Whitworth (6 ⅔ IP, 15 H, 17 R, 9 ER, 1 BB, 2 K)

2B – Tucker Woolever (CAS), Logan Mollenkopf (CAS), Jonas McCuen (CUL), Hunter Albert (CUL), Caleb McCuen (CUL)