West Bloomfield Baseball Pounds North Farmington, 12-3

With seven games to play next week, the  varsity baseball team needed a solid start from pitcher Tyler Grafmiller on Friday against Oakland Activities Association Blue rival North Farmington High to spare its bullpen.

The junior sure come through. Grafmiller pitched six innings in the 12-3 home win and allowed just seven hits. He didn’t walk a batter and struck out four.

“He gave us a bulldog effort today,” West Bloomfield Head Coach Eric Pierce said. “He didn’t have his best stuff and got us through six innings.”

Grafmiller didn’t make a lot of batters miss, but he kept the ball down in the strike zone and forced a lot of ground balls.

“He’s not a pitcher that’s going to overpower you, per se, but he counts on a lot of control and has command over four pitches,” Pierce said.

It helped that the Lakers' (4-6; 2-4 OAA Blue) fielding was tremendous.

Dillon Dexter had back-to-back putouts on hard hit balls at third base in the fifth inning, both of which could have been infield singles. With runners on first and third in the sixth inning, first baseman Timo DeYoung turned a double play that ended a potential comeback.

DeYoung fielded a sharply hit ground ball right behind the bag at first. He touched the base and threw to shortstop Ryan Bilkovic, who was covering second. A force-out was no longer an option, but Bilkovic was able to put the tag on the runner to get the out and end the inning.

“That play was absolutely huge,” Pierce said. “Definitely a momentum killer for them.”

Dexter and DeYoung also paired up on offense to put the game out of reach with back-to-back home runs in the bottom of the sixth. Dexter crushed a three-run homer to center field with two runners on. Then DeYoung came up and hit a solo shot to left.

“Being up 7-3, it’s nice to get the insurance in the last inning, it lets you breathe a little easier,” Pierce said. “And we got them there with two outs, that was real nice.”

Pierce hopes the victory will help his team build a little momentum. West Bloomfield has had 13 rainouts so far this season and the team will make up most of those games up in the next three weeks. The Lakers play seven games next week and six the following week.

West Bloomfield is behind Seaholm High and Andover High in the OAA Blue, but there’s still plenty of time left to make a run.

“Hopefully, this will carry us forward,” Pierce said. “Looking at the league, we’ve been close with everybody, we’ve been right there. Our record doesn’t indicate where we are going to be (at the end of the year).”