OSWEGO -- Thursday night's Southwest Prairie Conference game between city rivals Oswego and Oswego East provided a little bit of everything in the Wolves' 12-6 victory over the Panthers.
The Wolves pounded out 20 hits but committed six errors and left 11 on base while the Panthers managed to score six runs on only three hits.
The win also gave Oswego East its first season series victory over Oswego.
"It feels good," Wolves coach Jim Vera said. "It's a nice rivalry -- these kids play together growing up (and) they all played little league."
Wolves (14-17, 7-10) starter Matt Rodriguez improved to 4-1 with an erratic 5 2/3 innings where he walked six and hit two batters -- including Brandt Stone with the bases loaded and two out in the bottom of the sixth to prevent a 10-run, six-inning victory.
Yet despite having Panthers (6-18, 3-14) all over the basepaths, Oswego managed only three earned runs off Rodriguez. Ryan Prinzing, Stone and Cory Johnson had the only Panther hits on the night.
"We've been in a stretch here the last couple weeks where we're kind of snake-bitten," Panthers coach Chris Neitzel said. "Anything that can go wrong goes wrong for us. But you can't take anything away from Oswego East. They came in here and hit the heck out of the ball."
Stone didn't like the plunking and exchanged words with Rodriguez. It was the second time Stone had been hit and it came after Oswego reliever Vinnie Caringella hit Johnny Savu and Ray Thomas in the top of the sixth. Thomas had also been hit twice on Tuesday.
The two teams are scheduled to finish up the series today at Oswego East at 4 p.m.
Oswego East's offense was paced by Mike Mikulan (five hits, four runs), Thomas (three RBIs), Matt Brostowitz (three RBIs) and Josh Aceret (two RBI).
"We've been really inconsistent in terms of our hitting," Vera said. "We've had conference games where we've been one-hit or two-hit. We've also had games like (Thursday) where we score a bunch of runs."
Oswego starter Nick Welch gave up seven runs on 13 hits in 4 1/3 innings while three relievers gave up five runs thereafter.
"We've lost a lot of games and we're hoping to get through the regular season and in the 3A regional maybe we can catch lightning and start our season over," Neitzel said. "That's where we're at right now."
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