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Stansbury Park • Tied with two other teams for first place in Region 10, the Stansbury Stallions broke the deadlock Monday at least for one day. In a battle with Union that could be characterized as a pitchers' duel in many ways, the Stallions beat back the Cougars 4-2.
Union (8-6, 3-2), along with Park City, came into the day as part of the first-place logjam.
And the visitors got more than solid pitching from junior Logan Duncan, who set the first nine Stansbury (8-7, 4-1) batters down in order over the first three innings.
Even when the Stallions did start collecting singles, they were more pokes than line drives. But Stansbury did start hitting, getting seven hits over the fifth and sixth innings to score two in each frame.
"That's the idea, just to get the job done," said Stallions' junior Mitch Lindsay, who drove in the two go-ahead runs in the bottom of the sixth to break a 2-2 tie.
Until that single, Lindsay's day had included two groundouts against Duncan, and that was pretty typical for all the Stansbury bats.
"We stood up in the box, he was a slower pitcher than we were used to," Lindsay said. "He threw me a curveball, it broke outside and I just tapped it over the second baseman's head. Everything to the right side was pretty much free."
The Cougars grabbed a 1-0 lead in the fourth as Lincoln Labrum and Matt Williams both singled. But BYU-bound Stansbury pitcher Mitch McIntyre otherwise was keeping the Union batters in check.
McIntyre fanned 14 Cougars through five innings.
"Our pitcher's one of the top in the state at the three-A level," said Stallions coach Ray Clinton, whose team will travel to Roosevelt on Tuesday for another game against Union. "We need to tighten up our defense; they shouldn't have scored any runs."
Stansbury broke through against Duncan in the fifth as Jordan Bolser started with an opposite-field single like Lindsay's to right-center.
Parker Buys, who came in to pitch the sixth and seventh, scored the first run on a groundout by Lindsay
Austin Woodhouse then drove in a second run with another single also an opposite-field bloop, this one to left-center.
After Union came back to tie with a single run in the top of the sixth, the bottom of the inning held in store the final two runs of the game as Stansbury had three singles off Duncan.
This time, it was a seeing-eye single between third and short by Bolser, a bad hop infield hit by Buys and, finally, Lindsay's game-winner.
"We're making our way right now. We wanted that win, but sometimes it doesn't come out," Duncan said. "They got what they needed. It just means we've got to come back and go at them harder."
Storylines
R Stansbury pitcher Mitch McIntyre strikes out 14 batters through five innings and combines with reliever Parker Buys for the pitching duties.
• Mitch Lindsay breaks a 2-2 tie in the sixth by slapping an opposite-field single to score two runs for the Stallions.
• Union hurler Logan Duncan has 1-2-3 innings over the first three before eventually giving up two runs in both the fifth and sixth.