Hutchinson has ensured there will be a new Class 3A state baseball champion.
A fielding error allowed two Tigers to score in a three-run fifth inning and seventh-seeded Hutchinson beat No. 2 Totino-Grace 5-3 Wednesday at the Mini Met in Jordan.
“We didn’t think it was an upset at all. We thought that the seven seed was not right for us,” said Hudson Lien, who drove in two runs and earned the save.
Battling a sore hip, Larkun Kurth deftly maneuvered his way through six innings, and Brady Larson had three of Hutchinson’s eight hits.
“I think we knew we were the better team and weren’t going to lose,” Kurth said.
Up next for Hutchinson (18-9), which was seeded fifth in its section and won four elimination games to make state, is a noon Thursday semifinal against Mahtomedi or Simley.
No current Tigers were born the last time Hutchinson was in the tournament. That was 2006. The school’s only other appearance was 1960.
Kellen Westphal had a couple of hits, and Tommy Heifort struck out nine in five innings for Totino-Grace (20-8).
However, the defending state champion committed a couple of fielding errors and made a pair of costly base-running blunders. Three of Hutchinson’s runs were unearned, including a pair in the fifth.
Alex Flores led off with a double, advanced to third two batters later on a Larson single and scored on a Lien rap. Larson and Lien scored with two outs on a booted ground ball.
“Sometimes things kind of work for you, sometimes they don’t. It’s a funny game,” Totino-Grace coach Mike Smith said.
Hutchinson scored in each of the first two innings — including on a wild pitch — and Totino-Grace scored once in the second through fourth innings for a 3-2 lead.
Twice in the first three innings, Totino-Grace ran out of a potential big inning. A runner was thrown out at the plate on a botched pickoff at third base in the second, and a player Smith called “a super-aggressive kid” was thrown out at second trying to extend a single after a throw from the outfield tried to get a runner at third base.
“There’s a couple things that were head-scratchers, but that happens most games. There’s some things that you go, ‘I wonder why that happened.’ Things were a little more important today,” Smith said.
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