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Clover baseball splits with Bulldogs
CLOVERDALE-- Cloverdale baseball hosted the Monrovia Bulldogs Monday night in the first of two back-to-back games. The Clovers had their ups and downs in game one, but they ultimately fell, 6-0.
"Branston Scott was really good on the mound tonight," Coach Jarrod Duff said. "If we get that kind of effort on the mound from him we're going to be in good shape. We played pretty solid defensively, but we made some errors on simple plays we should've made. We just didn't hit the ball."
The biggest comment coach Duff had to say of his team was that the hitting was not there. He said they had been in a slump for a week now and it continued to show Monday. They only had two hits.
"I just told them (Clovers) that I wish there was one or two things that I could tell them to start magically hitting the ball better," Duff said. "Just seeing the ball better is big. We work on certain hitting situations looking for certain pitches. I've played baseball and coached baseball and sometimes it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. You just got to keep grinding it out."
Scott led his team and put them in a position to win the game. He only gave up 7 hits in six innings pitched and four runs. He had some command issues giving up a combined four walks and hit batters but he made the pitch when it mattered. He had two strikeouts.
"Branston gave us a chance tonight because of his effort," Duff said. "Him and Brayden White behind the plate work really good together. When Brayden is catching it is a whole different dimension. No body is excited about trying to run the bases. Branston gave us a chance."
In game two sophomore Duke Duff pitched the seven innings and did a good job limiting the Bulldogs' scoring opportunities.
"We got off to a good start in the first inning. Duke Duff led off with a walk and scored on a sacrifice fly by Brantson Scott to put us up 1-0," coach Duff said. "Duke started on the mound and struggled with his command in the first inning. We also had some mistakes defensively that cost us in that inning. Monrovia took the lead by scoring three runs in the bottom of the first."
After the first innings three runs by Monrovia, the Clovers shut down the Bulldog offense until its two runs in the seventh.
However those two runs weren't enough to prolong the game due to the eight runs scored by Cloverdale in the fifth inning.
"Duke fought through his issues on the mound early and ended up pitching a solid game. We had a huge inning with our bats in the top of the fifth," coach Duff said. "(We) had four hits and two walks at the plate that inning including a grand slam home run by Brayden White with two outs and and 0-2 count. Joe Martin hit a two-run home run two batters later.
"So we took a 9-3 lead into the bottom of the fifth," Duff continued. "They were able to score two runs in the bottom of the seventh to make it a 9-5 final score. We had some big at bats in that inning. Obviously the two home runs were huge, but Noah Cox's bunt was huge for us. He got the bunt down with runners on first and second and forced them to make a tough play they were not able to execute and that loaded the bases for us."
This win kicked off Cloverdale's road trip in which they face four teams on the road ending with a doubleheader at Union Friday.
The next match for the Clovers will be Thursday against Turkey Run.
Pitching: IP R H K
Duff 7 5 5 7
Batting:
Duke Duff was 1-2 with a single & 2 walks
Troy Davis was 1-3 with a single & 1 walk
Brayden White was 1-3 with a HR & a hit by pitch
Brantson Scott was 1-3 with a single & a Sac Fly
Joe Martin was 1-3 with a HR
Haiden Davis was 1-3 with a single