Washington County Enterprise-Leader
Cardinals sleepwalk translates into loss
FARMINGTON — Scoring four unanswered runs in the top of the seventh inning empowered Clarksville to dish out an 8-4 loss to Farmington in nonconference baseball action on Monday, April 10.
In his evaluation, Farmington coach Jay Harper felt the Cardinals got caught looking ahead to a Tuesday game against Shiloh Christian and sort of sleepwalked their way through the Clarksville game.
“We only won one inning. They won two, and our thing is ‘win the innings,’ and we’re not winning innings right now. We struck out way too many times, eight times. We popped it up four times. You’re not going to win and be a successful baseball team if you keep doing that. You can’t just come out here and sleepwalk through games and think that’s not important,” Harper said.
Landon Leeds doubled to lead off the third inning for the Panthers. He moved to third on a groundout and scored on Rhett Fultz’ sacrifice fly to push the Panthers ahead, 3-2.
Farmington loaded the bases with two outs in the bottom of the fourth, and walked in a run to knot the score at 3-3 when Zane Schmitt reached a full count, then took ball-four. Clarksville escaped further damage with Briley Reeder striking out the next batter.
Clarksville again took a 1-run lead in the top of the fifth.
Case Enderland belted a triple. Morgan Schader drove him in, tying the game again, this time at 4-4, but got out. Luke Elsik also tripled for the Cardinals in the inning, but was left stranded and Farmington wouldn’t score again.
Ten Panthers came to the plate in the seventh and combined to produce four runs.
The Cardinals were hurt by walks and wild pitches.
“We didn’t pitch it well enough all night, too many walks, too many free bases, too much pressure on our defense. Give Clarksville credit, they hit it when they needed to hit it. We did not. We left the bases loaded twice in the first couple innings and we left nine on,” Harper said.
Braxton Payne began the surge with a leadoff single. After an out, Reeder was hit by a pitch.
Harper switched pitchers, but the next guy got beaned to load the bases for Clarksville, initiating another pitching change. One run scored on a wild pitch with the other two runners advancing to second and third.
Nathan Powell drove in a run with a sacrifice fly, giving Clarksville a 6-4 lead with two outs.
The Panthers’ seventh run scored on a wild pitch and Talan Case drove in their eighth run with a single into left field.
Enderland doubled in Farmington’s last at-bat and moved to third on a dropped strike three with the runner thrown out at first, but the game ended with him stranded as Clarksville took the 8-4 win.
“Yeah, tomorrow’s important to us. Shiloh’s important, it’s a conference game, but you have to get better in the games like this. We regressed a little bit today I think and we have to make sure that we battle every time we come on the baseball field,” Harper said.