Landwehr Is Light Outs in Blowout of Rascals
June 28, 2018 - Frontier League (FL)
Normal CornBelters News Release
Normal CornBelters pitcher Jack Landwehr
(Normal CornBelters)
NORMAL, Ill. - Both Jack Landwehr and the Belter bats clicked on Wednesday night as the Normal CornBelters (19-20) blew out the River City Rascals (21-20) 12-3.
"We won the series, but we want to come out tomorrow and want to go for the sweep. We are trying to climb up in the standings and compete with the rest of the league," said Billy Horn.
Despite coming into the ball game without a win under his belt, Jack Landwehr (1-2) has been a solid piece in the Normal rotation, but tonight he took it to another level to earn that first 'W'. The Illinois state product retired the first 14 Rascals he faced and struck out half of them. He surrendered his first hit on a two-out single in the fifth. The righty struck out at least one batter every inning, including four innings where he fanned two. With his family in attendance, he didn't allow any walks and retired River City in order five times. Landwehr went on to set season highs in innings (7) and strikeouts (12) in his fifth career start. The 12 strikeouts were the most by a Normal starter this year and helped work his ERA down to 2.53, second lowest on the team.
"He (Landwehr) was fantastic. He fills it up and throws a lot of strikes, that's his thing. Had 12 strikeouts tonight and the beautiful thing again is he didn't walk anybody. He was constantly getting ahead in counts and making hitters uncomfortable at the plate. He did a tremendous job tonight, a great kid and works his tail off. He was with us in spring training and we gave him a second chance to come back because at the time it wasn't the right fit, kind of the odd man out, but I told him to stay in touch and keep working."
The message that Hitting Coach Pascual Santiago preached tonight was, "Have good at-bats and have a plan of what you're doing. We don't have to press, put more pressure on the pitcher than anything else." And the message proved to be the right answer as Normal scored nine runs in the first.
While Landwehr was making the Rascals look lost up at the plate, the CornBelters weren't and they wasted no time to take an early lead. Andrew Godbold singled with the bases loaded and no outs to give Normal a 2-0 lead. The Belters loaded the bases again on a single from Joel Davis. River City went on to walk in two more runs. Sam Vega followed with a high chopper that bounced over the third basemen to bring in Davis and Normal then led 5-0. Justin Fletcher came up for the second time in the inning and hit a sac fly. The new hit king; Santiago Chirino got a hold of one and hit his first home run of the year to conclude the nine-run first, which is the most runs Normal has scored in an inning this season. The three-run homer was his first dinger since July 7th of last year.
"He (Chirino) got a hold of one and he usually doesn't pull the ball, but he said Papi he threw one right in my wheelhouse and I got my hands extended and hit it hard," said Horn.
The CornBelters didn't put up any more runs until the seventh and eighth. Tony Holton hit his first home run of the season and gave Normal its largest lead of the season, 11. The final Belter run was Vega who scored on a fielder's choice.
River City scored their three runs off Kevin Mathews in the eighth. Trevor Simms finished off the ninth to give Normal the series win.
The CornBelters look to sweep River City for the second time this season with sending lefthander Ryan Lawlor to the mound; first pitch is a 7:05 p.m.
Images from this story
 Normal CornBelters pitcher Jack Landwehr |
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