Chesterton baseball team bounces back from sloppy 7-4 loss at Munster to win three in a row at Joe Heath Classic in Lafayette and improves season record to 6-3

TOM KEEGAN
Onwardtrojans.com

A varsity baseball player at Chesterton since freshman year, junior catcher Caden Hackett belted his first high school home run, a shot well over the fence in left-center, with one runner on and two outs in the seventh inning Thursday night at Munster. Three innings earlier, Hackett had rifled a throw to second base to easily nail a baserunner trying to steal and drove in three runs on the night.
Center fielder Rob Czarniecki continued his hot start to the season with a 2-for-3 night with a walk and a double ahead of Hackett’s home run.
It wasn’t enough. Munster won the game 7-4 in large part because Chesterton committed five errors, four of the throwing variety, and Munster had a clean slate defensively.
Hackett’s home run momentarily energized the Trojans, who couldn’t get anything else going.
“There were two outs and I didn’t want to make the last out of the game and was just doing everything I could to keep the game going,” Hackett said.
It was his first home run since hitting three in 15U travel ball, all three in one day, one in the first game and two in the second.
Hitting a ball over the fence in a high school game for the first time was thrilling for Hackett, but still didn’t quite match the charge he gets out of gunning out runners.
“It’s two different feelings obviously, but I just like the feeling of throwing someone out,” he said. “I feel that anyone could hit a home run, but not anyone could come behind the plate and throw someone out.”
A strong case could be made that Chesterton has better players than the Mustangs. But it’s the team that plays better baseball that usually wins the game and there was no question as to which squad that was on this night.
Two of the errors came on botched pickoff attempts.
“We’re 0 for 9 on pickoffs that I’ve called,” Coach John Bogner said. “We’ve thrown the ball away every time. All nine of them would have been outs had we performed and executed.”
Some of the mistakes were on the receiving end of the throws.
Pickoffs are a good example of the sort of drills worked on in early season practices, but with the game coming in the middle of a stretch of eight games in nine days, practices have been rare for the Trojans.
Hackett, who has the sort of level demeanor that helps weather the inevitable ups and down in baseball, was disappointed with the team’s performance vs. Munster, but only in a temporary way.
He said he considered the ails from the game all to be fixable.
“Totally,” he said after Thursday’s game. “We’re only six games in, so we can come back, especially since my freshman year we were 1-4 and came back and made a run and only lost three games the whole rest of the year. So, I have a lot of faith in us.”
His faith was rewarded instantly.
The Trojans followed the loss by winning three games in two days against Lafayette area schools in the Joe Heath Classic, one on Friday and two on Saturday to improve their record to 6-3. A look at the three Joe Heath games, each played at the opponent’s high school diamond:
Chesterton 10, McCutcheon 1: John Knight struck out six in five innings and allowed one run on seven hits and two walks for the win. Ethan Glassman went 2 for 4 with a three-run double, Eli McClelland went 2 for 5 and drove in a run and Nate Redman singled, drove in two runs and walked twice.
Chesterton 6, Lafayette Jefferson 3: Czarniecki went 3 for 4 with a triple, drove in a run and scored two and is off to an outrageously good start to the season.
He is batting .586 and 9 of 17 hits have been for extra bases. Plus, that doesn’t count the clearly fair ball over the fence that was ruled foul in a game in Kokomo the previous weekend, which would have made his home run total three, instead of two.
A Kentucky recruit, Czarniecki is hitting the ball even harder than during his all-state season as a sophomore, and he’s producing equally well against strong teams and weaker ones.
“Rob’s put in a lot of time. You know what else helps him? January and February,” Bogner said of the athlete who played basketball his first three years of high school. “This is his first time in his high school career he had a January and February and those eight weeks of taking swings and throwing off a bullpen (mound) and just being an athlete and getting back to being Rob is so valuable. You love to have him playing multiple sports, you like to see him competing, but man for baseball those reps are immeasurable and you see the results. He deserves those results because he outworks everybody we have and some of our kids work really hard.”
Czarniecki has a .692 on base percentage and a 1.138 slugging percentage for an unheard of 1.830 OPS.
Eli McClelland (1 for 3, 2 RBI), Troy Barrett (1 for 2, an RBI and a double) and Isaiah Prater (1 for 2 with triple) also had big hits for the Trojans.
Chesterton 8, Lafayette Harrison 2: Barrett singled, doubled, drove in three runs and struck out seven batters without walking one in three innings and allowed one run on three hits.
Cam Campbell pitched the first four innings and allowed one run.
Czarniecki, Glassman, Nate Redman and Prater also had multi-hit games for the Trojans (6-3).
This shapes up as the easiest week on the schedule for Chesterton, with just three games, starting on the road Tuesday at Michigan City and playing the Wolves at home Wednesday, then hitting the road Friday to play South Bend Adams.
Thus far, the Trojans are 0-3 against teams that start this week with winning records and 6-0 against schools that open the week with losing records.
Chesterton has outscored Griffith, Merrillville twice, McCutcheon, Lafayette Jefferson and Lafayette Harrison by a combined score of 83-6. The Trojans have been outscored by Greenfield Central, Plainfield and Munster by a combined score of 33-17.