Guerrero makes ISU win look easy

Apr. 17—Mitch Hannahs had some cautionary tales for his Indiana State baseball team late Friday afternoon after a 5-0 Missouri Valley Conference series-opening win over Valparaiso.

Midseason All-America left-handed pitcher Geremy Guerrero was the reason for one of them.

"It's not gonna be that easy [the rest of the weekend]," Hannahs said after the game. "I told [the Sycamores], 'make sure you don't think that's the norm,' although lately, that's been the norm for Geremy. He's making the game look easy right now."

Guerrero made the Sycamores' home opener easy, settling for a two-hit shutout after flirting with both a perfect game and a no-hitter for quite a while. The fact that he threw a 106-pitch complete game was enough of a feat, it being the first nine-inning performance by a Sycamore this season.

Guerrero said he's never pitched a perfect game or a no-hitter — "I came close in high school," he noted — and was never thinking about one on Friday.

"Those things really don't cross my mind," the pitcher said. "I let my defense work, I pitch to contact to keep my pitch count down . . . if it happens, it happens."

It looked like it could happen Friday, when Guerrero wasn't doing all that good a job of pitching to contact. He struck out the first seven Valpo hitters and nine of the first 11, and retired the first 13 batters before Jeremy Drudge broke up the perfect game with a fifth-inning walk.

Kaleb Hannahs grounded into a double play to end that inning, but Brady Renfro led off the sixth with a single that ended the no-hit bid. Guerrero gave up his second walk one batter later, but got out of the inning unscathed thanks to a two-out defensive play by third baseman Diego Gines. And then, although there was occasional activity in the ISU bullpen, he finished off the game with just 24 pitches in the seventh, eighth and ninth innings.

"My work ethic got a little better," Guerrero said when asked about the difference between his senior season and the earlier part of his career with both the Sycamores and the Terre Haute Rex. "I'm throwing all my pitches for strikes, keeping batters off-balance the best I can."

Offensively, ISU got a 4-for-4 performance from left fielder Aaron Beck and took the lead for good in the bottom of the third inning.

Beck had singled in the bottom of the second, the first baserunner for either team, and Jordan Schaffer followed with a double to put two runners in scoring position with just one out. ISU failed to bring home either runner, however, and the workday was over for Valparaiso opener Easton Rhodehouse.

Ryan Mintz, who did the bulk of the visitors' work on the mound Friday, got through two batters in the bottom of the third without incident but then hit Brian Fuentes with a pitch. Max Wright followed with a single, Miguel Rivera broke the scoreless tie with a double to right and Beck tripled to the left-center gap for two more runs.

That was it for the ISU offense for awhile — there were six one-two-three innings in the game, six of them Guerrero's doing — but Seth Gergely doubled with one out in the seventh and scored on Josue Urdaneta's two-out single. More insurance came in the eighth when Wright walked and stole second — his first theft of the season — and came home on Beck's double.

"It was a great way to start the home season," said Beck. "It's great to be back here at home, finally [after 24 road games]. It's nice to play on the field you practice on, and you couldn't ask for better weather. Now we've just got to go out and win the next three [a 1 p.m. doubleheader Saturday, a 1 p.m. single game Sunday]."

Coach Hannahs had a slightly different reaction to ISU's first game this spring at Bob Warn Field.

"I'm glad to get the first one out of the way," he said. "You come out here for the first time, there are fans in the stands . . . there's tendency sometimes to try to do too much." Sycamore hitters, he added, were sometimes guilty of that sin on Friday.

"We've still got to get better," Hannahs concluded. "I like some things, I don't like some things, and if you want to beat the teams you hope to beat down the road, you've got to get better. We're a work in progress."

Kaleb Hannahs, incidentally was 0 for 3, one of Guerrero's early strikeout victims before the double-play ball and a seventh-inning grounder to Gines at third. The Valparaiso freshman did make some nice defensive plays, including a tough-hop smash to retire Gines to end the bottom of the eighth.