Cruising Landis unsupported as Flyers even Series

The Challengers still lack a win at home this postseason. Although outhitting their opponents 9-7, they had to hand Game 2 4-5 to the Therwil Flyers behind a strong Reto Siegel, mainly due to several misplays in defense.

Landis started his career-high 15th game for the Challengers and cruised through the Flyers' lineup for most of his 6.2 innings, fanning a total of 10 batters.

By silenceing Eichenberger and Bennett (going a combined 0-for-6 with 4 K's against Landis) - the heart of the opposed batting order - he kept his team in the game and prevented a bigger deficit for a defense that didn't give him proper support.

The fielders around Landis and reliever Oliver Labhart combined for five errors, most of them on routine plays that led to a pair of unearned runs.

Flyers shortstop Sebastian Zwyer, who scored three runs in total, opened the score in the second on one of these errors, a throw off the bag by Patrick Zöllig.

Zöllig made up for his mistake in the following inning by bunting over Chris Hardy, who had reached on an error and a stolen second.

Hardy crossed the plate to tie the game on Saentis Zeller's single in the following at-bat.

But apart from recorded errors, the Challengers defense continued unfocused and unessecarily conceded bases or baserunners to their opponents.

This was already the case when Zwyer got on with what should have been a single, but was able to reach second with an ill-positioned Challengers outfield.

In his third time up Zwyer drilled another linedrive to center and went for second, but this time Anubis Benitez fired the ball right back to the infield, where second baseman Chris Palatinus unfortunately lost the ball spinning around for the tag.

Zwyer was credited with a double, and what looked like a possible out led to the decisive moment of the game.

After retiring the next two batters, Landis gave up consecutive walks to the bottom of the lineup to load the bases, and Siegel's two-out-single put the guests ahead again.

Third baseman Koller then lined a ball past Harry Bregy to right, where outfielder Nick Lehmann had trouble picking up the ball and thus failed to throw out Koller at first to end the inning.

Lehmann tried to nail the second Flyer coming around at home, but not in time, and the ball was cut, leaving Koller with a two-out, two-RBI-double.

After ending this sixth inning by striking out Eichenberger, Landis reacted himself by lifting the ball over the fence for a double, only the second Challengers hit against a dominant Siegel up to that point, and scored on catcher Tobias Siegrist's follow-up single.

In the seventh, a tiring Landis walked in an unearned run after getting two quick outs and another Zöllig error, and was relieved by Labhart, who ended a bases-loaded threat by grounding out Siegel.

Labhart himself finally sparked the Challengers offense with a single to deep right center, that scored Zeller all the way from first with two outs.

Landis' follow-up hit made it three consecutive singles, and also Siegrist hit the ball hard, but one of the often seen 9-3 groundouts at Heerenschürli ended the inning.

Labhart kept the opponent hitless in the final two innings and opened the opportunity to get back to the rivals from Therwil on the now also tiring, but still battling Siegel.

Hits by Bregy and Zöllig and a walk to pinch hitter Manuel Schretzmann loaded the bases for Zeller.

But Siegel worked the third baseman hard an finally got him to pop out to shallow left center.

A walk and an error, combined with aggressive baserunning, led to two runners in scoring position in the final offense, with substitute Thomas Blank at the plate, who just made a miraculous catch in right field to preserve the score and had entered for the ejected Benitez.

Blank had an RBI-groundout to second, and left the tying run at third.

But Bregy's flyball to shallow center was caught for the final out, and the Flyers took the game to even up the series at one each.

After Sundays' rainout, the Finals will now continue with Game 3 in Therwil on October 16 at 2pm before returning to Zürich the next day.

Game notes
Bregy grounded out in the second inning in his 400th at-bat in the NLA. ...Landis' steal in the ninth inning gives him 151 career steals, tying him with Kurt Vogt for second place on the alltime list for stolen bases.