Whenever Armada’s baseball team needed something from Adam Sauer, he was there to deliver.

Sauer moved from second base to the mound to tame Richmond’s booming bats in the second inning, then hit a game-winning single in the seventh to lift the Tigers to a 10-9 victory in the Blue Water Area Conference baseball game. He also drove in Armada’s first run with a sacrifice fly.

The winning rally started with Lucas Pratt’s two-out single to right. Pratt raced to third on a wild pickoff attempt at first, then Sauer hit a grounder deep in the hole at shortstop and beat the long throw to first.

“All I’m thinking is that I need to get something I can get to the outfield,” Sauer said. “I was sitting dead red on a fastball, got it but drove too early on it. Fortunately, I was able to get it through the right spot and was able to run it out.

“It was a great team effort today. We all put in so much good work during the offseason. That was a good team we just played.”

After an inning and a half it looked like it might be the Blue Devils celebrating when the game was over — Richmond scored three times in each of the first two innings and led 6-1 going into the bottom of the second.

“We said it’s 0-0. We’ve got to keep playing like we have all year,” Sauer said. “We knew if we’d keep putting the bat to the ball good things would happen and we got it done today.”

Dylan Cambron led off the Armada second with a double. Nigel Navarro singled and Kaden Meeks walked to load the bases. A walk to Marshall Ridenour forced in the first run. Luke Pretty, batting ninth in the lineup, crushed a double to left, driving in all three runners. Cal Bolen followed with a single to tie the game at 6-all.

“Our boys came back,” said Tigers coach Dave Checkley. “It was a 6-1 game, all of a sudden it’s 6-6 and a battle the rest of the way. They’re a good hitting team but we stayed with them and gave ourselves a chance to win. After that slow start we could have just tanked. Adam Sauer came in and pitched great.”

Sauer pitched five innings and gave up two earned runs. He gave way to Meeks, who pitched a scoreless seventh and got the win when Armada snapped the 9-9 tie.

“We have quite a few seniors,” Checkley said. “We were young last year but they steadily became more mentally tough. We have a few who played on varsity as sophomores so that experience helps. Most of this whole group played together last year. We had only one senior last year so that camaraderie has taught them how to finish games.”

The Tigers took advantage of Richmond mistakes.

“Three walks scored and we had four or five errors,” said Blue Devils coach Scott Evans. “We didn’t play clean but don’t take anything away from Armada. That’s a senior-laden team over there that did a great job. They battled back. They put the ball in play and we shot ourselves in the foot too many times. When you play good teams you can’t do that. It’s a credit to Dave and his kids — they battled.”

Evans wasn’t surprised it was a high-scoring contest.

“I predicted 9-8 before the game started,” he said.

Back-to-back doubles by Luke Pastuschyn and Anthony Bonnetti highlighted Richmond’s three-run first inning. Cameron Murray led off the second with a triple and scored on Kolten Bartels’ single. Dominic Bonnetti capped the inning with a two-run single.

Another two-run single by Dominic Bonnetti helped the Blue Devils regain the lead in the third.

Armada went ahead with three runs in the fourth with the key hit a two-run single by Cambron, who had three hits and threw out two runners attempting to steal. Richmond took advantage of two Armada errors to push across a run in the sixth to tie the game at 9-9.

Pastuschyn had three hits for Richmond. Bolen and Pretty each had two hits for Armada.

Evans said that the Blue Devils aren’t where they want to be at this point in the season.

“Your leaders have to be leaders in key moments,” he said. “Big players have to come up with big plays in big moments. We didn’t have those big plays defensively and we didn’t have them at the plate. We’re experienced but right now we’re not in a good place. We’re not confident in what we do. We don’t trust each other. We have to clean some things up and get it fixed before the end of the season.”