While Ankeny Centennial star Joey Oakie elected to turn pro after being selected in the MLB amateur draft, Dowling Catholic’s Trever Baumler reportedly turned down some pretty good offers to finish out his high school career and to play college baseball at TCU.
The Maroons benefited from that decision on Wednesday night.
Baumler tossed a three-hitter and recorded 12 strikeouts to lead Dowling to a 2-0 victory at fifth-ranked Centennial in a Class 4A substate final. It was the third consecutive postseason shutout for the Maroons (23-15), who advanced to next week’s state tournament at Cedar Rapids.
“I love this team. They battled all year,” said Centennial coach Mark Hey, whose squad finished the season at 29-11. “These things happen sometimes. We ran into a great pitcher. It’s not that we lost the game. They just played better and beat us.”
Baumler, who lowered his ERA to 1.17, needed just 77 pitches to go the distance–throwing 63 of them for strikes. He raised his record to 5-2.
“He was just on tonight,” Centennial outfielder Jackson Reed said of Baumler. “He had his fastball going and his slider.”
Centennial senior Emerson Alberhasky was nearly as good on the mound. He got the start in place of Oakie, who sat and watched the game from the dugout after being selected by the Cleveland Guardians with the 84th overall pick in the third round of the 2024 draft on Monday.
“Coach Hey had a talk with the pitching staff before Joey’s start at Waukee Northwest (on July 1) and told us that it was possibly Joey’s last start,” said Alberhasky. “After that he pulled me aside and told me I would be throwing the substate final if Joey was to get drafted, so I knew for quite awhile.”
Alberhasky (5-2) allowed just one earned run on five hits and had eight strikeouts.
“He’s a great pitcher for us,” Hey said. “He threw the game that he could, and we had Sean (Stewart) in relief if we needed him as well as Tripp (Rawlings) and Will (Morris). But we left him in because he was getting ahead in the count and really dominating their hitters. I’m just really proud of him.”
After Dowling left two runners stranded in scoring position in the third inning, Centennial nearly took the lead in the next frame. Baumler retired 10 of the first 11 batters that he faced before Reed reached second on an error with one out in the fourth.
Kohen Bollwinkel reached on an infield single with two outs for the Jaguars’ first hit, and Reed raced to third on the throw to first. When the throw back to third briefly got away, Reed tried to score but was thrown out on a close play at the plate.
“Coach just told me to go,” Reed said. “I thought it was going to be way past (the third baseman), but we didn’t see the leftfielder come in and he just got me.”
Dowling had a runner cut down at third base in the fifth inning, but the Maroons continued their rally and eventually took a 1-0 lead on a wild pitch to Baumler that allowed Thomas Huegerich to score what proved to be the winning run.
“Baumler is a great pitcher and hats off to him. He has thrown 15 scoreless innings in the postseason so far, which is just insane,” Alberhasky said. “I definitely knew that giving up even just one or two runs could end up being the difference, which it was in the end. However, that just motivated me more and I don’t feel like that pressure got to me.”
The Maroons later added an insurance run on a wild play at the plate in the seventh. With one out and runners on the corners, Baumler hit a grounder to third and Morris’ throw home was in plenty of time, but apparently Centennial catcher Leyton Kolln missed the tag as Huegerich also missed the plate.
The ball then got away from Kolln as Huegerich scrambled back to the plate.
“They said he dropped the ball,” Hey said. “I thought it was on the transfer–I thought he had the ball long enough for the out. But there’s pressure on the umpires, too. The game moves kind of quick sometimes, and I just don’t think he saw it. But he’s a good umpire.”
The Jaguars got leadoff singles from Pratim Amin in the sixth and Morris in the seventh, but Baumler responded both times by retiring the next three batters. The game ended when Reed Anderson was retired on hard-hit grounder to first.
“We always seem to wind up with a really good pitcher in our substate. I don’t know why that is, but it is what it is,” Hey said. “I thought our guys put together some really good at-bats. I’m happy with their attitude and their effort. I’m just disappointed with the outcome.”
Centennial was trying to qualify for state for the first time in school history. The Jaguars, who won two of three meetings against Dowling during the regular season, finished one win shy of the school-record 30 victories that they set a year ago.
“I think we did great,” Reed said. “We just fell short.”
The Maroons will play No. 2 Dallas Center-Grimes (35-3) in the Class 4A quarterfinals on Tuesday at 5 p.m.
