2B High School Baseball: Cox, Toutle Lake cooks up revenge for Adna (2024)

TOUTLE — It’s been said payback is a dish best served cold. Well, the Fighting Ducks might as well be the Little Caesars of high school baseball because they prefer to keep their payback hot and ready.

And you can keep the five bucks. In East Cowlitz County, comeuppance is on the house.

To that end, Toutle Lake had the perfect recipe for success, Thursday, when it sent Connor Cox to the mound against Adna in a Central 2B League tilt. Just 24-hours prior the Fighting Ducks suffered a stinging extra inning loss on the road at Adna. With that loss still fresh on its mind, Toutle Lake rode a complete game effort from Cox to a 2-0 win over the Pirates

“We always feel confident with Cox on the bump,” Toutle Lake coach Chris Byrd said .”We feel confident with Swanson on the bump, and we feel confident with our other senior Dylan Fraidenburg when he’s on the bump. It’s great to have three seniors who have logged a lot of innings and been super successful.”

The victory left Toutle Lake and Adna tied for the top spot in the C2BL standings with just two weeks left in the regular season.

With the rawhide in his hand Cox did everything in his power to deliver vengeance for the Ducks. Tossing a seven-inning complete game he struck out six batters and allowed just three hits and walked three other batters on the way to the shutout.

“As a team we’re working on some things still, and we’re getting better every day,” Cox said. “We definitely had a little bit of fire from last night.”

And even when the Pirates did put foot traffic on the bases the Toutle Lake defense was up to the challenge of quickly eliminating the threat. The only error on the day was charged to Cox himself on a comebacker to the mound where he lost his footing. Everything else was picture perfect.

There was the 6-3 double play started by first baseman Nicholson, who fielded a hot groundball, stepped on his bag and made a precision toss to second base where shortstop Ryan Kilponen handled the throw and applied the tag to a sliding base runner.

“We’ve been playing consistent but they were on a different level today,” Cox said. “If they don’t make those plays it’s a completely different ballgame.”

Then there was the play following Cox’s error, when another swinging but put the ball in play in no-man’s land between the mound and home plate. This time, catcher Easton White pounced on the ball and delivered as strike to first to end the inning.

And nobody made more standout plays on the day for the Ducks than Kale Kimball who handled the hot corner aplomb while taking hits away from the Pirates left and right.

“Honestly, when I was looking at my lineup we only had one guy who played in the same spot for two games and I thought it was kind of weird,” Bird noted. “It’s not necessarily what I always want but it worked out; Kimball was phenomenal at third base today. He made five or six plays… the whole infield really stepped up.”

With the threat of a sweep lingering in their minds, the Ducks wasted little time putting a run up on the board. Toutle Lake’s second batter in the order, Dom Rivera whacked a double in the first inning and then put his speed on display when he advanced to third base on a passed ball before scoring on a RBI single from Zach Swanson.

With the way Cox was pitching that run would have been enough to net the win, but Dylan Fraidenburg was insistent on creating some breathing room. In the fourth inning, Fraidenburg provided that cushion when he ambushed a fastball and deposited it to the playground beyond the outfield fence in left-center.

“I just got up there, it was a 1-1 count and I was trying to put it in play… it just sort of happened,” Fraidenburg said.

After facing two tough pitchers from Adna on back-to-back days, Toutle Lake’s senior outfielder came away impressed with the offerings of Pirates like Tristan Percival and Nakano on the mound.

“They throw a lot of strikes and they’ve got a lot of good movement on their fastball and curveballs,” Fraidenburg noted.

That mistake by Adna’s Cameron Nakano was one of only a few he made all day. The Pirates’ southpaw pitched six innings while allowing just four hits and two runs.

“He’s played really well for them the last two days. He had two big hits with the walk-off yesterday and he had a double here today,” Byrd noted. “He kept us enough off balance today to keep them in the game. We were fortunate to get a couple.”

And yet, the Fighting Ducks know they’d rather go to battle with their pitching staff than any other arms across the countryside.

“I feel like we can always count on them every game they throw,” Fraidenburg said. “They’ve never let us down, they’re two amazing pitchers. Best I’ve ever seen. I’ve been playing with them since were 9 or 10 so I’ve watched them grow up. They’re great.”

Toutle Lake (14-3, 12-2 league) is now tied with Adna for first place in the Central 2B League. The Fighting Ducks are scheduled to play a doubleheader at Rainier (WA) on Monday starting at 3 p.m.

Even with two weeks left in the regular season, the Ducks are already thinking about what might be in store the next time they see those dastardly Highway 6 Pirates.

“We’ll have a rubber match in the playoffs, probably,” Byrd said.