The Mid-Prairie baseball team gears up to face West Branch tonight in conference play.

The Golden Hawks are 5-16 this season and have lost a lot of close games that could have gone their way.

Mid-Prairie is hitting .230 as a team and have scored 41 runs. Spencer Shalla still leads the way on offense with a .314 average with three RBI’s. Seth Eash has six RBI;s on the team and leads the category. Pitching wise Shalla also leads a squad with a combined ERA of 3.80. Shalla has a 1.09 ERA with 31 K’s.

The Mid-Prairie stats are back from when they were 3-10 on the year.

West Branch is 5-13 on the year and hitting .227 as a team and are on an 11 game losing streaking, including a 5-4 loss to Mid-Prairie. Their offense is lead by Brandon Shortt with a .340 average and 10 RBI’s and Thomas Schreiber with a .327 average and seven RBI’s.

Pitching wise West Branch has a team ERA of 3.87 and 91 strikeouts. Their top pitcher is Tyler Donovan with a 3-3 record, 2.40 ERA and 35 strikeouts.

Mid-Prairie head coach Ryan Koller said West Branch used up their good pitcher, but his team will come back with the same quality pitching that got them the win last time.

“We’ll come back with the same type of quality pitching that we had last time with Jonas Coblentz, Nick Stimson and Shalla. Stat wise, Shalla is our top guy, and they won’t have the pitching that we’ll be throwing so I hope that we can go in there and get the sweep,” Koller said.

Mid-Prairie and West Branch play a double header at West Branch and you can catch all of the action of game two right here on AM and FM KCII and KCIIradio.com under radio plus with pregame at 7 and first pitch at 7:30. The one to count on for today’s local sports coverage is AM and FM KCII and KCIIradio.com.