Gallery by Tina Laney
Shady Spring – The last time Colten Tate pitched against Independence the Patriots scored five runs off of him, three earned.
Thursday with the Tigers’ season on the line he gave them exactly what they needed against a Patriot squad that started fast.
Tate threw 4.1 innings of relief in a sectional elimination, game helping the Tigers earn a 5-4 win over their county rivals in Shady.
With the win Shady eliminates Independence for the second consecutive season and will get a chance to defend its sectional title when it hosts Nicholas County Friday, needing to win two games to clinch.
Having exhausted ace Cameron Manns Wednesday, Shady head coach Jordan Meadows mulled over who to throw Thursday. After initially tapping his younger brother Jacob, he elected to go with senior Tyler Reed. He lasted 1.2 innings, giving up four hits and a run before Meadows went to Tate.
“We thought we could get through the lineup twice with (Reed) and he got through it once and was kind of struggling,” Meadows said. “He didn’t have a lot of velocity so we asked him if he wanted to pitch tomorrow and he told us he wasn’t really feeling it today so we brought Tate in, another senior, and said, ‘It’s your time to shine’ and once he got a lead he was more dialed in. Towards the end he got a little tired and walked a guy and gave up a hit so we put Jake in and Jake dialed in and we’ll see who we’ll pitch tomorrow.”
A night after errors doomed the Tigers, they passed the curse along to Independence with defense ultimately making the difference.
Shady scored in the second, third, fourth and sixth innings with the fourth being the only one in which the hosts scored multiple runs, though that outburst could’ve been avoided.
A drop in right field with one out in the bottom of the fourth allowed Aiden Calvert to reach base and Reed followed with a two-out walk to set the stage for Jacob Meadows. He hit a high fly ball to left field with two outs that got lost in the sun, allowing both Calvert and Reed to score to expand the lead to 4-1.
Miscues hampered the Patriots again in the sixth when Brian Seabolt reached on an error to leadoff, was bunted to second base, took third on a wild pitch and scored on a Cash McCall sacrifice fly.
In total all three of Indy’s errors contributed directly to three runs.
“We had some mistakes,” Indy head coach Scott Cuthbert said. “We’ve kind of avoided them this year but when you get to tournament time there’s a lot more pressure and bigger crowds. They did hurt us a little bit tonight. Clay (Basham), we couldn’t have asked him to pitch any better tonight. It’s tough to pitch out here and they got a timely hit when they needed to and we couldn’t. We had a couple opportunities early to put some more runs on the board and we didn’t. But in this game if you give yourself a chance to win that’s all you can ask for because you never know what’s going to happen in baseball.”
The Patriots’ woes extended to the offensive end as well.
They collected three hits in the opening frame, scoring just once while stranding a pair in the second inning. Even when they were aggressive in manufacturing runs they were burned. An opportunity to cut into a 4-1 deficit arose in the top of the fifth inning when Cole Cunningham singled into center with Basham on second but a throw from Meadows arrived at the plate before he did for the final out of the inning.
To Tate’s credit his effectiveness contributed to Indy’s struggles.
“He was the first one to text us last night after the loss and tell us to shake it off,” Meadows said. “He’s one of those guys that even if it’s Barry Bonds or Alex Rodriguez he’s throwing to, he doesn’t care. He pitched to contact and once we got a lead he was a lot better and dialed in.”
“Last time we hit him pretty good but it’s hard to say,” Cuthbert said when quizzed on the challenges Tate presented. “Sometimes when you change speeds like that it impacts you. Sometimes the pressure gets a kid. You’ve got to remember they’re still high school kids. The later it goes and you’re still trailing, the bats get more tense some times.”
Each run scored courtesy of errors or eradicated by stellar defensive plays ultimately mattered. With one out in the seventh, Independence slugger James Williams crushed a three-run homer off of Meadows to ignite hope and make it a 5-4 game. Meadows rebounded, striking out the next two batters to cement the victory.
“Early on (Basham) had three or four strikeouts in a row and our kids were lackadaisical and got fired up,” Coach Meadows said. “Once we started to put it in play and they had a few errors and we got it turned around we got a few hits here and there and executed here and there. That’s once thing we didn’t do yesterday. When we had second and third Jake hit a fly ball and scored two on an error. Stuff like execution is big especially in the sectional tournament because you never know what’s going to happen.”
Email: tylerjackson@lootpress.com and follow on Twitter @tjack94
