DEFOREST — Defense has been one of the areas the Baraboo American Legion baseball team had been able to count on in the early part of its season.

But not on Wednesday.

The Baraboo defense made six errors — all in the infield — to give DeForest an 8-5 win.

"The defense has been pretty good," Baraboo coach Craig Schlender said. "It was real good at Reedsburg, and at Portage the grass was so long and it was powder dry. Tonight, for some reason, everybody was throwing the ball around or bobbling it around."

As a result, DeForest scored those eight runs with the help of just two hits.

Baraboo pitchers didn't help their cause by issuing five free passes in the game. But just one of the runs allowed was earned.

"We were getting just enough walks along with it to throw a little fuel on the fire," Schlender said. "They weren't hard plays. They weren't hitting the ball that hard. We were just making mostly throwing errors."

Baraboo fell behind with an unearned run in the first inning, and the third inning was prolonged after an error. With the help of another error, four runs in all scored in the inning.

Trailing 8-0 heading to the top of the sixth inning, Baraboo finally got on the bard with some good approaches at the plate.

"In the sixth inning I had everybody taking a pitch, and they did a nice job of being patient and drawing walks and battling," Schlender said. "Some of them fouled off two or three pitches to get walks."

Baraboo had five walks in the inning, and Mark Kowalke and Nick Labeots both had singles.

Baraboo had five hits, with Kowalke and Robbie Schultz both getting two of them. Labeots had the other.

Schlender said he'd like to see the hitting come around, and he expects that to happen when the weather cooperates better and allows the team to hold more regular practices.

"I think that they're not hitting, partially because of all the rain outs," Schlender said. "We just haven't had a chance to get in the cage and work on hitting as much as we should."

Sam Seymour took the loss for Baraboo despite not allowing an earned run. He went the first three innings, walking three batters and allowing both DeForest hits.

Jake Overlien pitched the fourth and fifth without allowing a hit; he issued two walks.

Brady Olson finished the game with an impressive inning, in which he struck out two batters without allowing a base runner.

Schlender said he spread the ball around to three pitchers to keep them all available for duty in the team's weekend tournament at Wisconsin Rapids. Baraboo will play one game Friday, one game Saturday and two games Sunday against some tough competition.

"I think the level of competition is going to go up immensely," Schlender said. "They're almost all triple-A teams, except for Merrill, and they won the double-A tournament last year. Hopefully the team is going to follow the competition and play better ball."