Dragons confident after Orr’s no-hitter

With their 8-2A slate set to begin in earnest, Junction City is hoping to get their rotation behind Gabe Richard settled.

Earlier this month, Jacob Orr took a major step toward nailing down a spot with a no-hitter against Mountain Pine.

Orr walked two and struck out six in a 6-0 win against the Red Devils.

“Each game, he’s gotten a little better,” said Junction City coach Joe Paul Hammett. “The first week of the season, he had a little trouble with control, but against Mountain Pine, he was on. He had three pitches, and he was throwing all of them for strikes. He’s not a strikeout pitcher. He pitches to contact, and that’s what he did that day and we played errorfree baseball.

“If you can put those two together, you’ve got something because we’ve had trouble making plays a little bit this year early, but that day for sure, he was as sharp as I’ve seen him. We need that because he’s one of our top three pitchers. His curveball was better that day and he had better control. Hopefully we’ll build on that and he’ll continue to get a little better each time on the mound.”

Hammett said Orr’s performance gave his team, which has a wealth of new faces, a boost in confidence.

“It was huge because

my philosophy on baseball is that it all starts with the guy on the mound defensively,” Hammett said. “Kids play better when somebody as they've thrown like Jacob threw in that game, the next he one starts, hopefully we've got a lot of confidence in him. The players do, so they usually play better. I'm hoping that's the case for us with Jacob on the mound.”

Orr followed his no-hitter by picking up a win over McGehee, allowing just one hit in five innings of work. He walked six and struck out seven while allowing five runs against the Owls.

“He wasn't quite as sharp as he was against Mountain Pine, and I think one of the things that contributed was that the wind was blowing about 40 miles an hour and it cooled off that day,” Hammett said.

“The weather wasn't conducive to pitching really well, but he threw pretty well. He just had trouble finding the strike zone on and off. That why I hope he progresses on as we play. He was still good enough for us to get the win.”

Richard himself owns a one-hitter in Junction City's conference win at Spring Hill, and he also handed Taylor their first loss of the season last week after striking out nine over six-plus innings of work.

With their staff emerging and offense perking up in recent games, Hammett said the Dragons, who are competing in the Ouachita Tournament this week, are continuing to improve.

“We're definitely getting better,” Hammett said. “Our hitting was probably our weakest aspect up until now. The last two, three games, we've swung the bats a whole lot better. Hopefully if we can continue to do that, our pitching for the most part has been good enough for us to win, especially with Gabe. Gabe was late starting because of basketball, but when he's on and we're ready to play, I think we're pretty tough.

“We've got a lot of confidence in Gabe and he's really our only experienced pitcher that we have. We're hoping Jacob and (Coyt) Sellers and Trey (Walker) that we've pitched them enough going into April that we're ready for our conference season, and I think we will be. Our bats are picking up, so we should be in good shape.

“We struggled some early, but that was expected with all of the new faces because Gabe is the only guy really with varsity experience on the team.”