Marengo’s Michael Kirchhoff fires one-hitter in KRC win over Richmond-Burton – Shaw Local

MARENGO – Marengo righthander Michael Kirchhoff has not been in a charitable mood quite a while.

The Indians junior has not allowed a legitimate hit since Woodstock North’s Shane Buening homered in the fifth inning off him on April 12, a 13-7 Marengo victory.

In the 13 innings since, Kirchhoff’s only hit off was a sixth-inning pop-up by Richmond-Burton’s Ryan Junge that fell between Indians first baseman Andrew Johnson and second baseman Ryan Heuser.

Kirchhoff was at the 105-pitch limit when he got R-B’s Gavin Bosa on a ground out to Johnson to finish off an 8-2 victory Thursday in their Kishwaukee River Conference baseball game at Rod Poppe Fields.

“Staying out of my head is the most part, just going batter by batter, pitch by pitch,” said Kirchhoff, who fanned eight batters and walked two. “And just having my teammates have my back.”

Marengo (16-8, 9-3 KRC) trailed 2-1 after the first inning as each team committed three errors. The Indians gave Kirchhoff all he needed with a five-hit, four-run second inning and he took care of things from there.

Cody Stallings and Drew Litchfield started that inning with back-to-back doubles. Heuser and David Lopez also had RBI singles.

“Coach Naranjo tells Cody and I, ‘Stay simple, stay short,’ ” Litchfield said. “We just did that and shortened up our swings and put the ball in play.”

After the first inning, RB (16-7, 7-5) had only four baserunners, two on walks, one on an error and Junge’s hit.

“It was definitely his slider, it worked a lot,” said Litchfield, Marengo’s catcher. “His two-seam was working too. But definitely today it was the slider. He threw his offspeed very well, his fastball was locating.”

Johnson and Aaron Schroeder both had RBIs in the sixth inning as Marengo added three more runs.

Kirchhoff threw a five-inning no-hitter on April 17 to beat Johnsburg 13-0, basically giving him back-to-back no-no’s.

“When he’s in the zone and locked in, he’s impressive,” Indians coach Nick Naranjo said. “He’s tough. He has high velocity. He has a slider that is good.

“I have lived in the zone pretty well. In the first inning, with the errors that we made, I minimized the damage and got a big strikeout. I have just competed. We talk about controlling what he can control. “He did that really well.”

R-B’s Dylan Radke was hit by the game’s first pitch. Joseph Larsen reached on an error and both came around to score on two more errors. But Kirchhoff struck out the side and retired 11 of the next 12 Rockets he faced. Litchfield picked off the one runner that did reach base.

Junge shut down Marengo 3-1 in Tuesday’s KRC game.

“We didn’t get off the bus to play the right way today,” Rockets coach Mike Giese said. “When we came out and they gave us two runs, we went out in the first inning and made errors, we just didn’t embrace the moment there. That kind of set the tone for the whole game.”

R-B’s Aiden Wicinski was strong in the third, fourth and fifth, but the Rockets could not find any hits.

“I felt like we were chasing ourselves the whole game,” Giese said. “Aiden started out got into a little bit of a groove after the first two innings. But offensively our issue is we’re young and their kid throws hard. We were a little overmatched in the batter’s box. When we’re chasing like that it’s tough for us. “We were out of sequence the whole game.”