By Nicholas Huenefeld

Special to the Sentinel-Tribune

MILLBURY — Drew Tajblik gutted out a complete game performance while Aiden Young delivered a game-best three hits and scored the game-winning run in the sixth to lead the Lake baseball team to a 4-3 win at home over Otsego on Friday.

“That’s the type of game as a coach that takes a few years off your life,” Lake coach Casey Witt said. “It gave me a few gray hairs, but I’m proud of the way our kids battled.”

With the victory, the Flyers (20-3, 10-2) remained in first place in the Northern Buckeye Conference, increasing their lead over Eastwood (9-3) to one full game with two left for each team, which includes the completion of their suspended game on May 15.

Lake and Otsego, which had their May 6 game suspended due to rain, are scheduled to complete that on Saturday morning in Tontogany.

“It was a well-played and well-pitched game on both sides,” Otsego coach Chase Welker said. “Tip of the cap to Tajblik, who came out and threw a really good game. We battled and hung in there, but just didn’t get the breaks at the end.

“Our guys have shown resilience all year. Hopefully we can bounce back from this one tomorrow.”

Tajblik improved to 8-0 on the campaign, allowing five hits, three runs and three walks while striking out three.

After allowing single runs in the fifth and sixth innings, Tajblik sat at 95 pitches, but Witt had “zero thought” of not letting him finish the game. Otsego’s Cohen Feehan proceeded to draw a one-out walk, but Tajblik got a fly out to right and a pop out in front of the plate to end the game.

“I feel like my fastball was hitting my spots, my curveball was moving, and I kept them off balance,” Tajblik said. “I just located my pitches mainly, used the right pitches at the right time.

“I had a lot of adrenaline going (in the seventh). I just wanted to finish the game, finish strong. You start it, you have to end it.”

The Flyers backed Tajblik with an early lead as they pushed across three runs over the first two innings. Jay Blazevich’s RBI single in the first got the scoring started before a sacrifice bunt from Connor Eck and an RBI single from Gavin Kohlhofer made it 3-0.

After stranding two runners in scoring position over the first two frames, Otsego began its comeback with a sacrifice fly from Bodde Simon in the third.

With two outs and nobody on in the fifth, Tyler O’Brien doubled deep to left before Feehan drove him in one at bat later to pull the Knights within one. A two-out single from Mason Roe then knotted things up in the sixth.

“We don’t talk about it as a team, but when Drew is on the mound, we like to play to win innings because we know we don’t have to go score eight to 10 runs in order to win baseball games, and that was the approach today,” Witt said.

Young finished 3-for-3 with two runs to lead the Flyers offensively. In the deciding sixth-inning rally, he led off with a bloop single to left before stealing second and being sacrificed to third. He then scored on a wild pitch with two outs.

“We’ve had talks with Aiden for the past week about his approach at the plate, and he’s really started piecing it together his last handful of at bats,” Witt said. “He got a terrific read on the wild pitch when he scored the go-ahead run.”

Kohlhofer also went 1-for-3 with a run, an RBI and a walk for Lake, while Korbin Adkins was 1-for-2 with a walk out of the nine-hole.

O’Brien led the Knights from the leadoff spot, finishing 1-for-2 with two runs, a double and a walk.

“We came out pretty strong in the beginning, slowed down in the middle but came out with the win,” Young said. “Drew was great on the mound, and we had some great at bats (in key moments).”