Press Release Austrian Baseball Federation
In four days, Austria will give its historical debut at the I. WBSC U-23 Baseball World Cup, taking place from October the 28th to November 6th 2016 in Monterrey. On Monday, the National Team was welcomed warmly at the LMB Academy complex half an hour north of Monterrey. The Tigres Academy Team faced Austria for their second exhibition game.
Fabian Hirnschal started for Austria and impressed with another great outing. Again, the Defense didn`t support its pitcher and kept the inning alive. The Tigres were able to score after two errors and brought the first run home. Austria needed some at-bats to adapt to the right hander, but finally Sammy Hackl could put the ball over the left fielder for a triple and could be scored by Claus Seiser for the 3:1. Seiser also had a good day defensively snagging a pair of ground outs and had a nice over the should catch to save some runs.
Hirnschal could recover from another three runs after the Academy Team hit him well. The outfielders got some work to do, but Amin Many grabbed the ball in deep center field. After this, Hirnschal cruised through the next four inning, executing his pitches and not giving up another run. Bleyer shut down the Mexican Youngsters for another frame, before Michael Koller got the ball in the eighth. He gave up some hits and let the Academy Team score another two run, but fought back to finish the inning at a score of 5:1
Again, Seiser put himself in scoring position before Mo Scheicher could move him over to third. While walking the next batter, a wild pitch gave Seiser the chance to score the 2nd run for the Austrian U-23 National Team.
With a four run deficit, Omar Duenas came in as the closer but struggled finding his command at the first few batters, but regained control over his pitches to finish the inning without a run.
Despite the 6:2 loss, Austria´s Assistant Coach Clemens Cichocki was satisfied with today`s exhibition game: We played solid baseball, on a high level. For the next games we need to wake up the killer instinct and win some games. For Wednesday, the final preperation game is planned, before the team´s recovery phase starts.