Baseball Game Preview: Pleasant Plains Cardinals vs. Routt Catholic Rockets

The Pleasant Plains Cardinals are taking a road trip to face off against the Routt Catholic Rockets at 4:30 p.m. on Friday. The teams are on pretty different trajectories at the moment (Pleasant Plains has four straight wins, Routt Catholic has three straight losses), but none of that matters once you're on the field.

Pleasant Plains let Springfield stack four runs on them in the fifth inning on Wednesday but luckily Pleasant Plains prevailed anyway. The Cardinals won by a run and slipped past the Senators 5-4. That's two games straight that the Cardinals have won by just one run.

Meanwhile, Routt Catholic fought the good fight in their extra-innings contest against Liberty on Thursday but wound up with a less-than-desirable result. They fell just short of the Eagles by a score of 7-6.

Jace Lautemann made the most of his time at bat despite the final result and went 2-for-3 with one triple, two RBI, and one run. The team also got some help courtesy of Samuel Long, who went 2-for-3 with two runs and one stolen base.

Pleasant Plains' victory was their ninth straight at home, which pushed their record up to 23-5. The home wins came thanks in part to their pitching effort, having only surrendered 1.0 run on average over those games. As for Routt Catholic, their defeat dropped their record down to 15-10.

Pleasant Plains suffered a grim 7-0 defeat to Routt Catholic in their previous matchup back in May of 2024. Can the Cardinals avenge their loss or is history doomed to repeat itself? We'll find out soon enough.