The smaller things matter, too.

With clutch base knocks at somewhat of a premium Friday night, Freeport players stole nine bases and turned up the heat on host Karns City. The Yellowjackets came out on top by a 4-2 score in the non-conference matchup at Michelle Krill Memorial Field at Historic Pullman Park.

“We battled,” Freeport coach Ed Carr said. “We stranded way too many guys on base, but we did manufacture today. Our running game I thought was really, really good and — to me — that was the deciding factor. We put a lot of pressure on them and we got guys in scoring position a lot.

“Good teams find a way to win.”

The Yellowjackets went just 2-for-15 with runners in scoring position in the contest, but the top three hitters in the order — Brady Stivenson, Tyler Asti, and Zach Clark — combined for five free passes and two hits. Clark broke the seal on the scoreboard with an RBI triple in the top of the third frame — driving in Asti — and soon after came across on a wild pitch.

“We’ve really tried to stack our bottom and top with on-base guys,” Carr said. “That’s kind of our game, getting on base and hoping that the middle of the order does it ... Those guys did a great job of setting up the table for us.”

The Gremlins mustered one run in each the fourth and fifth innings. In the former, Michael Neff followed Braden Grossman’s double with one of his own. The next time Karns City came up to bat, Hobie Bartoe reached on a fielding error and Mallick Metcalfe pushed him across with a single.

“We hung right with them,” Smith said. “That’s what we wanted to do. We wanted to bounce back and that’s what good teams do, is try to bounce back. And we did. We came up short on the scoreboard, but we never out of the game emotionally in the dugout, emotionally on the field.

“The only thing that we were down in was the score ... The only thing that would’ve been better was if we won.”

Freeport’s Jack Smetak stretched his side’s lead back to two runs by bashing an RBI triple in the away fifth. He also had a double that hit the left center field wall earlier in the game.

“I even joked with him before the game,” Smith said of the left-handed hitting Smetak. “I said, ‘Man, you’ve got to be about 25 years old.’ Because we play these guys every year in JVs and we try to get a game with them. It seems like he’s been here for 10 years.

“It’s hard to hit a ball deep here and he hammered it all over the place.”

“I just got my timing right today,” Smetak said. “That’s really it.”

Michael Hanz added an insurance fly with a sac fly RBI in the sixth. Dylan Stonebraker had thrown just five innings up until Friday night, but went the distance for the Yellowjackets to earn the win. He threw a total of 76 pitches.

Freeport 002 011 0 — 4 7 2

Karns City 000 110 0 — 2 9 0

W: Dylan Stonebraker 7IP (6K, 0BB); L: Wyatt Fleming 5IP (4K, 6BB)

Freeport (10-3): Brady Stivenson 1B R, Tyler Asti R, Zach Clark 3B RBI 2R, Michael Hanz RBI, Jack Smetak 3B 2B, Jonathan Hotalski 1B, Malik Febinger 2-1B.

Karns City (7-5): Jacob Jones 2-1B, Mallick Metcalfe 3-1B RBI, Braden Grossman 2B R, Michael Neff 2B RBI, Keon Williams 2-1B, Hobie Bartoe R.