The Indianola baseball team survived and advanced Friday evening, taking advantage of several Des Moines East Scarlets errors to win 4-1 in a game heard live on 94.3 KNIA. The Scarlets got the scoring started early with a two-out RBI single to take a 1-0 lead, but that would be all the offense they could muster for the rest of the contest. The Indians scored a pair of runs off an error in the second inning taking a 2-1 lead, then added another on a wild pitch in the fourth. Kael Kolarik then got the Indians lone RBI hit to push the lead to 4-1 in the fifth. The Scarlets had their best scoring chance of the night in the sixth inning getting the bases loaded with no outs, but Mark Pepper came on in relief to allow no runs and preserve the advantage. Head coach Jon Fitzpatrick tells KNIA Sports his team did what they had to do offensively tonight to earn the win, paired with some great pitching from his guys.

“We took advantage of the mistakes that they made, but we still have to get guys on in order to score them. Yes we did not necessarily drive those guys in, but it was nice I thought we put ourselves in position to be able to score on those. Obviously we would like to have more hits, but this is postseason baseball against some really good pitchers so we know that you’re probably only going to get 5 or 6 a game so can we cash those in.”

Connor Howard got the win on the mound. The Indians move on to host Des Moines Roosevelt Monday evening at 7pm in the substate semifinal.