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Clovers suffer tough home loss
CLOVERDALE--As of late the Cloverdale Clovers have found the right bats, scoring 17 total runs combined in the last two games, but they failed to get a single hit Thursday night against the West Vigo Vikings despite having some nice rips at the ball.
The Clovers lost in five innings, 15-0.
"I think we've hit the ball pretty well over the last two weeks," Coach Jarrod Duff said. "We didn't hit the ball as well tonight. We've had a couple rough games here of late, but our season is a long way from over. Monday and Tuesday night against Cascade is going to be huge for us. I feel like our hitting the last two weeks has been really well. We obviously have to hit the ball better than we did tonight."
Junior Brayden White was the only Clover to make it on base after walking in the first inning.
White pitched for the Clovers and had a good night to start off. He only allowed one base runner in the first two innings, but with his pitch count rising into the 60s in the third action started turning with the Vikings.
"I thought Brayden threw pretty well tonight," Duff said. "We had him on a pitch count. He got to the range where we were thinking we wanted to limit him on his pitches so that's when we pulled him."
Wyatt Lowe started off the third inning for West Vigo with a single and after three passed balls, he scored. Then, with no outs and a runner on Ty Lautenschlager hit a homerun that put his team up 4-0. White's night at the mound was through after three innings.
Four runs were scored by the Vikings because of passed balls.
"We'll just keep working on it in practice," Duff said. "There are a lot of areas we need to improve in so we'll work on it in practice."
Cloverdale had to use five different pitchers for the night and shuffled their defense around.
"We didn't put kids in any position that they hadn't played in," Duff said. "Those switches were made because of who we had on the mound."
West Vigo batted around the order in both the fourth and fifth innings scoring 11 runs. A sophomore, Noah Cox, came in to pitch for the Clovers with the bases loaded and no outs in the fifth innings. Cox only let two of those runners score, but only gave up one infield hit.
"They're just a solid team," Duff said. "They have a good baseball program and they have for years. They were just fundamentally sound in every area. The kid on the mound pitched well, the defense played well and they hit well so that's a good team."
The Clovers will return to action next Monday night against the Cascade Cadets.
At Cloverdale
West Vigo 004 47X X--15
Cloverdale 000 00X X--0
WP: Reese (WV) LP: White (C)
HR: WV Lautenschlager