Crone magnificent as Garden City takes series opener from Butler

By Mike Pilosof

Photos by Adam Shrimplin

Garden City, KS-There's still a lot of baseball to be played. But if Thursday was any indication, the Broncbusters improved rotation and bullpen could go a long way in them making a run in the Jayhawk West.

Malachi Crone was magnificent, allowing just one earned run on four hits in seven fantastic innings, Darrian Escobar-Winter provided the go-ahead RBI in the sixth, and Garden City topped Butler 3-2 in game one on Thursday afternoon at Williams Stadium.

"If you were to just look at our numbers through the first part of this season, with the errors and the fact that we weren't hitting the ball, you'd say that's a bad team," Head Coach Chris Finnegan said. "And while these games don't mean much because it's early, our guys have bought in."

And the leader of that pack was Crone, who set the tone right from the start. After a leadoff error in the first, the sophomore set down Dylan Werries, Colby Standard and Josh Cameron to avoid any trouble. He worked around a walk in the second, and faced the minimum in the third. But Crone's most spectacular sequence didn't come on a strikeout. No, it happened in the fifth. After Bryce Zimmerer led off the inning with a single, Crone fielded Jackson Syring's sharp grounder up the middle, spun around, threw a pellet to second before Escobar-Winter fired to first, completing a spectacular 1-6-3 double play.

"People don't even know this but Malachi has been sick for like three weeks," Finnegan said. "He's lost like 30 pounds. And to be honest, going into this game, we were going to start Rhett Halstead in game one. But he got sick."

By the results, Crone was feeling much better, and boy were his pitches humming.

"I really wanted to get better at missing on 0-2 or 1-2," Crone said afterwards. "I was leaving too many balls over the plate. So that's something that I've been working on."

With Crone in full control, Garden City went on the attack. In the first, Dakota Finley singled to right; then took second on an error. Ibrahim Rodriguez followed with an infield hit, and Jake Barber cleared the bases with one swing-lining a two-run triple down the right-field line to make it 2-0.

Butler answered back in the fourth with two runs, thanks in large part to two errors by Jean Barreto in right. Then, the Broncbusters squandered a chance to go back in front in the bottom half when they left the bases loaded.

"Was this game perfect? No," Finnegan said. "But the buy-in factor was definitely there."

The Broncbusters grabbed the lead for good in the sixth. Barber reached on a push bunt to the right side, Tommy Alitz moved him to second, and Colin Stone got on with another infield hit. That eventually set the table for Escobar-Winter, who with Barber standing at third, laid down a perfect bunt single that scored the go-ahead run.

That's all Crone needed.

The sophomore worked a perfect seventh inning, getting Brandon Ryan and RJ Lara to ground out before striking out Noah Argena.

"I added an old curveball that I hadn't been throwing for a while," Crone added. "That helped them stay off of my fastball."

It was the sophomore's first start since Feb. 8 vs. Southeast. His final line: seven innings pitched, one earned run, four hits and four strikeouts. Rodriguez and Barber each collected two hits.

Losing pitcher Dillan Janak, allowed three runs on 10 hits in 5 1/3 for the Grizzlies, who watched their seven-game winning streak come to an end. And the same guy who went 10-1 in 2019, was inconsistent all day.