Staff photo by Travis Rosenau
New Ulm VFW Silver’s Henry Forst takes off for third base during a Junior Upper Midwest Classic baseball game Saturday against Mankato American at Mueller Park in New Ulm.

NEW ULM — The New Ulm VFW Silver baseball team saw its time in this year’s Junior Upper Midwest Classic end with a loss on Saturday, but Silver head coach Mark Grossmann wasn’t too upset with a three-win weekend.

VFW Silver ran past Sleepy Eye Junior Legion 10-1 earlier Saturday at Mueller Park before falling 11-2 to Mankato American Junior Legion in a quarterfinals game also at Mueller Park to go 3-1 overall in the tournament.

After racking up 15 hits and not allowing a single error in a win over Sleepy Eye to start the day, the loss to American had some ugly moments for Silver. Silver stranded 11 runners, committed five errors and allowed six Mankato players to reach on hit by pitches in the game.

For Grossmann, though, how the tournament ended wasn’t going to take away from the previous three wins.

“I told the kids afterwards to just walk out of here with their heads held high,” Grossmann said. “You had a 3-1 weekend, this game just got away from us a little bit. We were a couple plays early from really being still in the game tight. East [American] is an excellent baseball team, they’ve got a great program going right now and we have to play good to beat them and we didn’t.

“They got two breaks early, we helped them with those two breaks, you take that out and we’re in a 4-1 ballgame in the sixth. We didn’t and some days you don’t, so you just look at the weekend as a whole. We had a very good weekend, I don’t want the kids to dwell on the one game where it wasn’t that good, and we’ll come out swinging again on Tuesday night against East’s VFW team this time.”

Mankato got a pair of runs in the first inning, led by an RBI triple from Koltin Kolbinger, and got two more runs in the third for a 4-0 lead. The third-inning runs came on a groundout and throwing error and a bases-loaded walk.

Silver got a run back in the fourth on an RBI single to right by Henry Forst. Silver pitcher Josh Forstner exited in the sixth after hitting back-to-back batters with pitches, finishing his day on the mound in five innings.

Forstner ended up allowing six hits and a walk for five earned runs while striking out five. He hit three batters with pitches.

Lane Ruch, a righty with a bit of sidearm delivery, took over for Forstner and gave up four hits in a row as American stretched its lead to 8-1. Ethan Lodes took over for Ruch and got a strikeout for the first out of the inning.

Lodes then forced a groundout that scored a run before hitting another American batter with a pitch to load the bases again. Lodes got another strikeout to end the inning.

“The two guys I pitched at the end just haven’t pitched due to rainouts,” Grossmann said. “They would have had more innings at this point, but we had some rainouts and I rolled by rotation around kind of where I was at and I went back to what I considered the top, and that’s always changing at this age level, you don’t know for sure.

“But I made some decisions that — maybe Lane and Ethan would have had five, six more innings. And they both came in and threw mostly strikes and that’s all you can ask for at that point. Then you kind of just let the chips fall where they may. They’ve got a little more time on the mound, they’ll get more and it’ll all get better.”

Lodes finished his two innings of work with three strikeouts.

American got two more runs in the seventh on an RBI double to left by Carson Mitzel for an 11-1 lead.

Silver got a run back in the bottom of the inning. Crosby Batt led off with a single before a wild pitch moved him up a base and a walk to Elijah Rieser had two on. A passed ball moved both runners up and Jaxon Hage grounded out to score Batt.

Evan Blekestad and Jeff Kral each went 2 for 4 to lead Silver at the plate against Mankato.

Earlier in the day against Sleepy Eye, Kral had a 4-for-4 day at the plate with two RBIs, giving him 11 hits in 13 at-bats during the tournament.

Ruch also was 3 for 4 with two doubles against Sleepy Eye, while Forstner was 2 for 4 with three RBIs and Alex Portner was 2 for 4. Forst got the complete-game win, allowing four hits and no walks for one earned run while striking out four.

Silver is scheduled to take on Mankato East VFW at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at Mueller Park.