Sixth-inning rally enables QND baseball team to run winning streak to 18 straight games

QUINCY — After Brady Kindhart led off the bottom of the sixth inning Tuesday with a double to deep center field, Jack Linenfelser stepped to the plate with one thing in mind.

“Put the ball in play,” he said.

The Quincy Notre Dame middle infielder did a little more than that.

Linenfelser traded places with Kindhart, roping a double to deep left field that plated Kindhart with the tying run and jumpstarting a five-run uprising that allowed the Raiders to hold on for an 8-6 victory over Macomb at Ferd Niemann Jr. Memorial Ballfield.

“I just had to do my job,” Linenfelser said. “I found a barrel and got him in. I did my job.”

The Raiders (27-2) needed multiple people to do their jobs in order for their mammoth win streak to remain intact.

Michael Stupavsky moved Linenfelser to third with a single, and a wild pitch allowed Linenfelser to dive headfirst across home plate with the go-ahead run. Ben Kasparie drove in a run with a sacrifice fly, while Dalton Miller and Alex Connoyer delivered back-to-back RBI singles.

And when the Bombers plated two runs in the top of seventh inning and still had the bases loaded with two outs, Tucker Tollerton came in from right field and struck out Langdon Lambert to end the game.

It preserved what is now an 18-game win streak. This was also the first time the Raiders had trailed any later than the first inning since a 9-6 loss to Beardstown on April 14.

QND’s average margin of victory during its win streak is 8.2 runs.

“We’ve been winning these games by a lot of runs lately, so it’s always good to have a good team come in here and test us and for us to come back in a game,” Linenfelser said.

The Raiders were playing catchup from the start.

Macomb’s Jack Duncan followed singles by Shawn Stufflebeam and Griffin Taylor by launching a three-run home run off QND’s Alex Connoyer for a 3-0 lead three batters into the game. Connor Watson’s two-out RBI single in the third inning made it 4-0.

QND hadn’t trailed by at least four runs since a 9-3 at Chatham Glenwood on April 9.

Unlike that game, where the Raiders surrendered six runs in the first inning and were down 8-0 before ever scoring, they mounted a rally. Miller’s RBI double in the third inning for QND on the board, and Kasparie had a two-run triple in the fourth to make it 4-3.

Two innings later, the big rally came.

“It says we don’t stop fighting,” said Linenfelser, who went 2 for 2 with two runs scored. “We could be down early in the first, but we will still find ways to scratch runs across and come back.”

Miller finished 3 for 4, while Connoyer had two hits. Connoyer worked five innings on the mound, allowing four runs and five hits with four strikeouts and three walks. Brady Kindhart, who got the victory, worked 1⅔ innings with two runs, two hits, two strikeouts and five walks. Tollerton struck out the only batter he faced to earn the save.