MOORHEAD - Moorhead baseball had eight wins all of last season. With Tuesday's 13-2 drubbing of Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton in six innings at Matson Field, the Spuds moved to 7-1 on the season. Not bad considering the Spuds returned just one regular starter.
"Going into this year, we were thinking it was going to be a rebuilding year and wanted to see what we had," Moorhead coach Greg Salvevold said. "Being stuck inside for six or seven straight weeks, we didn't know what to expect. Some of our first games were our first times being outside. You can see the guys were champing at the bit to be outside. I think it's a little combination of the boys being hungry and they know they don't have a lot of time to prepare for playoffs."
Michael Weismann moved to 4-0 on the season for Moorhead, giving up just one hit and two walks in his four innings on the mound.
"We have a lot more team chemistry than last year," Weismann said. "Playing whiffle ball in the fieldhouse gets old, so we were all scratching at the bit to come out here and do some damage."
Not many teams or people for that matter would find the positives of the area's wintery spring weather, but Moorhead grew closer as a team as the Spuds were cooped up indoors. Tanner Swenson even gave a shout out to the weather for his first career home run that ended the game in the bottom of the sixth inning.
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"I have warning-track power, so the wind gave it the extra push it needed," Swenson said. "We're a good close-knit group of guys with good chemistry and good baseball minds. Being inside every day with each other, waiting to get out, built a lot of group bonding. Getting outside, we're all aggressive with getting everything going."
Moorhead certainly didn't waste any time Tuesday, scoring a run in both the bottom of the first and second innings before dropping nine runs in the third to all but end it.
Drew Anderson opened the scoring with an RBI single in the first and Preston Kraiter's sacrifice fly in the second made it 2-0. The first four Spuds batters in the bottom of the third reached base and those four batters would all bat again in the inning, as the Spuds sent 13 to the plate and scored nine runs.
Anderson had an RBI single and Brandon Porter had an RBI double to make it 4-0. Anderson came around to score on a fielder's choice and Porter scored on a double steal to make it 6-0. Alex Wilmer came home on an error, Kraiter plated a run on a sacrifice fly, Weismann made it 10-0 on a two-RBI single and Landon Dickhaus scored on an error to make it 11-0.
"We're a lot closer than we were last year," Anderson said. "We hang out regularly and I think it's coming through on the field for us. Our bats are definitely coming alive and I think that's going to be our strength this year."
D-G-F (2-2) added two in the top of the fifth to avoid the 10-run rule and keep the game alive, but Swenson's two-run homer in the sixth closed it out.
"I think if we stay out of the bad inning we'd play with them," D-G-F coach Bill Ibach said. "We just haven't quite hit our stride yet."
DGF 000 020 x - 2 4 4
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MHD 119 002 x - 13 9 2
Weismann Swenson (5) and Skjefte and Noenig (4). Brown, Bolin (3), Sieling (4) and Oberg. W-Weismann (4-0). L-Brown (0-2). HR- Swenson.
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Chris Murphy at (701) 241-5548
