The names and the faces may change, but one thing has always been consistent over the years in baseball.
Walks and errors will kill you.
Monday night at Joseph H. Goddard Field in Coal City, Oak Hill found that old adage to be painfully true.
Once again using timely hitting, Independence took full advantage of six errors, eight walks and three hit batsmen by the visitors to hammer the Red Devils 18-6 in five innings.
“It has been the same for us this year. We have put the ball in play pretty good and our running puts pressure on people,” Independence head coach Scott Cuthbert said. “We went deep in counts again, especially at the top of the order, and they produced most of the night.”
The lineup for the Patriots looked a little different Monday with one of their top players, Atticus Goodson, out due to an illness.
Cuthbert moved his players up one notch from the normal batting order and Independence didn’t miss a beat.
Collectively the first five hitters had all seven hits, drove in 12 runs and scored 14 times on the night. In 20 plate appearances they reached base 18 times.
“We have talked a lot about be disciplined and working the count. We work on hitting with different counts in practice. It has taken them three years, but they are buying in a little bit,” Cuthbert said. “We didn’t get a lot of hits tonight, but putting the ball in play puts pressure on high school teams. If you throw a walk or two in there and get a big hit, that is what gives you the big inning.”
Independence scored three times in the first two innings and appeared to be on cruise control before running into trouble in the top of the third inning.
A pair of walks and a batter reaching on catcher’s interference loaded the bases for Zane Wolfe who singled home the first run of the night for Oak Hill.
A walk to Trent Rider plated the second run of the inning and forced a pitching change.
Braxton Hall greeted the new arm with a ringing double to clear the bases and pull the Red Devils back within one run with no outs in the inning.
Unfortunately for Oak Hill, Hall was left stranded and it would get no closer.
In the bottom of the inning, the Patriots sent 12 batters to the plate and exploded for eight runs to break the game wide open.
The big blow came from red-hot hitting Elijah Farrington. After a walk and a hit batsman set the table, Farrington rode a fastball over the right field fence for a three-run blast.
Normally hitting in the two-hole, Farrington moved up to hit lead-off with Goodson out of the lineup.
“I think he was a little nervous about that, but I told him it was nothing different. After the game starts there is no other lead-off again, so don’t worry about it,” Cuthbert said.
In his third trip to the plate, Farrington got the pitch he liked.
“My approach at the plate is to be quick and don’t strike out. I was looking for my outside pitch. It was there and I hit it,” Farrington said.
From that point, Oak Hill couldn’t get out of its own way making three crucial errors that led to five more runs and a 14-5 deficit.
“A team like (Independence), they don’t need any help. We battled back there and got it to 6-5. I thought if we could get off the field and come back in and hit, we would have a chance,” Oak Hill head coach Matt Boyd said. “We didn’t have to do anything spectacular, just make the routine plays. They hit the ball hard, but we had balls hit right at us and we didn’t make the throws. We had dropped fly balls. You can’t beat anybody like that.”
Two walks started the bottom of the fourth inning before a throwing error allowed two runs to come across.
The third walk of the inning put runners at first and second for Andy Lester who drilled a double in the gap to score both runners.
Oak Hill added one run in the top of the fifth, but it was not enough to extend the game.
Clay Basham drove in four runs on the night for Independence and Carson Brown knocked in three.
“It was good to see us play like that tonight without a big piece of the team,” Cuthbert said. “For his first time of the mound, Michael (McKinney) looked awesome for two innings, then he fell off a little bit. For the most part I thought Tanner (Sipes) did pretty good too. We made the plays we had to for the most part.”
Coming into the game a little short-handed, Boyd knew his team would have to play well to beat Independence.
“We are a little banged up right now and our arms are a little limited. We are running guys out there that haven’t pitched a lot of innings for us so far this year,” Boyd said. “We have to make plays behind them. Until we make the routine plays, we are going to struggle. Nobody is going to feel sorry for us. We have to fix it, or it’s going to get ugly.”
