HELENA — Will Lyng stood on the edge of history, peering forward from Kindrick Legion Field’s pitching rubber toward uncharted waters.
No Helena Senators player before him had carried an ERA this low this deep into the regular-season.
Ryder Murdock, the Billings Royals’ lead-off base runner in the seventh inning of a 5-2 contest, threatened that, but Lyng, as he did regularly throughout a record-breaking campaign, simply responded with strikes.
Bumping into legion baseball’s 105-pitch limit, the right-hander induced a roller to back-up third baseman Keaton Troyer (playing due to Tycen Mooney’s first-inning ejection), who sparked a 5-4-3 outing-ending double play, clearing the bases and securing Lyng’s spot in the record books.
“I was thinking about it after the game,” Troyer said. “It’s awesome. I never thought I’d get to do that, never thought I’d play third base for him…
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“Everything about it was amazing. It was a cool moment.”
Officially, Lyng finishes the 2024 regular-season with a 1.12 ERA (16 ER in 100.1 IP), resetting Helena’s 48-year-old single-season ERA mark (Rande Muffick, 1.15, 1976).
Helena Senators right-handed pitcher Will Lyng broke the program’s 48-year-old single-season ERA record (Rande Muffick, 1.15, 1976) with 6.2 innings of seven-hit, two-run (zero earned) baseball in a 5-2 victory over the Billings Royals on Friday, July 26, 2024.
