POLAND — It took a few innings in Tuesday’s drizzly, shrouded twilight, but the William J. Rogers American Legion baseball team finally figured out the strike zone from both points of view.

Starting pitcher John Simpson got more economical as the evening progressed. His teammates, in turn, grew more patient at the plate against a quartet of Tri-Town hurlers.

It resulted in a come-from-behind, 5-1 win for Post 153 of New Auburn, which has won six of its first eight games and finds itself in the thick of the weather-beaten Zone 3 pennant race.

“We’ve been in every game,” Simpson said. “The two games we lost, we feel like we could have won those.”

Simpson battled to keep Rogers in the game while it found its rhythm at the dish. Rogers took the lead with a three-run fifth inning in which it had only one hit but drew five walks.

Mike Hammond and Josh Delong both scored in the rally. Each also drew three of Rogers’ 11 walks.

“The first couple of innings I think we had the wrong mental plate approach,” Delong said. “We were up there trying to swing out of our pants and hit the ball as far as we could.”

Tyler Blanchard’s pinch-hit single and Nate Blais’ double paved the path to a pair of insurance runs in the sixth.

That was ample assistance for Simpson, who issued five free passes himself but benefited from a pair of double plays, one of which he started by stabbing a come-backer to the mound.

Simpson scattered five hits. Nate Pushard slammed the door with a 1-2-3 seventh.

“Johnny struggled a little bit with a couple walks in there, but he made some adjustments within himself and he did well,” Rogers manager Troy Crane said. “We were starting to show a little bit more patience at the plate. When you can play together, good things will happen as a group.”

Blais had three of Rogers’ six hits. Pushard had RBIs in both the fifth and sixth frames.

Garrett Fillebrown took a shutout into the fifth before hitting the wall for Tri-Town (2-4).

He retired Drew Lashua and Blais on ground balls to begin the inning, but walks to Hammond and Delong led to the hook in favor of Billy Rascoe.

Rascoe surrendered Pushard’s game-tying single and then walked Brandon Varney, Evan Raymond and Brandon Knapp consecutively to end his brief stint. Raymond and Knapp’s passes came with the bases loaded, nudging home the second and third runs.

“We’ve been squeaking them out,” Delong said, “and close baseball games are fun baseball games, as long as we win them.”

Hammond drew a walk against Billy Bickford, the third Tri-Town pitcher, and Delong greeted his replacement, Ethan Cailler, with another base on balls to cause more commotion in the sixth.

Jake Simard put Tri-Town on top in the fourth. He led off with a seeing-eye single, raced all the way from first to third on a passed ball and scored on Shawn Murphy’s two-out single.

Simard was Tri-Town’s lone repeat hitter.

“I didn’t have my best stuff. I wasn’t hitting the strike zone. (The umpire) wasn’t calling them at the knees,” Simpson said. “I was getting behind in counts, but somehow my defense got me out of it.”

Rogers turned its double plays in the first and fifth innings. It left the bases loaded three times.

“Our defense is playing really well. We’ve had a couple of hiccups here and there,” Delong said. “We hit the ball when we need to. Obviously we’d like to see ourselves hit the ball a little better as a team.”

koakes@sunjournal.com

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