Mentor coach Jeff Haase has been preaching the same philosophy since the preseason – pitch well, play defense, get timely hitting.
Haase's scrappy Cardinals did everything the first-year Mentor coach thought they were capable of in a 4-3 win over visiting Mayfield on May 4.
Mentor and Mayfield passed the lead back and forth five times, but clutch hits by Tommy Noll and Zak Schaefer, coupled with a strong outing on the mound by Nick Forsythe led the Cardinals to victory.
"I've said it before and I will say it again, today was an example of us being scrappy. We are a team where we need 1 through 18 to get it done, not just 1 through 9, and we need guys off the bench to be ready at any time and that is what we got," Haase said.
"Nick gutted it out on the mound and the defense behind him was phenomenal. Mayfield is a good club and we could see them again in the district semis. We are going to need everyone on this roster to get it done. Hopefully, we can take a little momentum into the tournament, but we have five games left this week."
Mentor (10-8) trailed, 3-2, in the bottom of the sixth before rallying for the win.
Mentor scored on a two-out RBI single by Noll driving in pinch runner Ricky Valeri – who stole second base – and Schaefer brought home Ian Gray with two outs in the bottom of the sixth with a single.
Michael Hritz and Dominic Dengel each had two hits for the Cardinals.
Forsythe allowed three runs over seven innings. Forsythe struck out five, walked one and gave up nine hits.
