Parry McCluer’s loss in the first round of the Pioneer District baseball tournament last Thursday at Narrows was a microcosm of the whole season for the Blues.
Struggling at the plate, the Blues, who fell to Liberty in the regular-season finale, 16-0, last Tuesday in Bedford, mustered only two hits against Narrows. Add that to four errors in the field, along with some erratic mound work, and the outcome was a 10-0 setback in the Pioneer tourney opener.
Much of PM’s offensive woes had to do with the effort of Narrows starting pitcher Parker Bryan. Bryan did not allow a hit until Lane Luckton led off the PM fifth inning with a double and gave up only one base runner in the first four frames. At one point, he retired eight straight PM batters and picked up 10 strikeouts to earn the win.
Parry McCluer hurlers, meanwhile, gave up only five hits in the contest, but they walked seven, hit three batters and tossed seven wild pitches. Defensively, the Blues were charged with four errors, leading to five unearned runs.
Narrows, which improved to 10-5 overall and will face Bath County in the championship game of the league tournament, got all the runs it needed by putting up five tallies in the first inning. A walk and a hit batsman started the rally, with Tucker Bryan scoring on Sam McGlothlin’s RBI single. Cooper Sutphin plated two more runs with his single, and an error allowed another run to score as the Green Wave stormed out to the 5-0 lead.
Narrows scored in every inning, including the fifth when Tucker Bryan reached on an error to open the frame and later scored on McGlothlin’s single to end the game.
Sutphin led the Narrows offensive effort, going 2-for-3 with a triple and three RBIs. McGlothlin also had two hits for the Green Wave and drove in a pair of runs.
Dylan Smals had the only other hit for the Blues, a single in the fifth, but Luckton was thrown out on the base paths to end that late threat for Parry McCluer.
Liberty 16, PM 0
Like the tournament game against Narrows, PM managed only two hits in the regular- season finale last Tuesday (May 14) at Liberty and fell to the Minutemen, 16-0.
Curtis King singled in the first, and Adison Haynes reached on a base hit in the second to account for PM’s two hits. The Blues had only two base runners from that point, however.
That’s because Liberty pitcher Aiden Cottrell shut the door. Cottrell went the full five innings on the mound for the home team, giving up just those two hits while striking out seven and walking only one.
The Minutemen (5-14) put this one away early, taking advantage of four PM errors in the first inning to storm out to a 6-0 lead. Cottrell helped his own cause with a two-RBI triple three batters into the outburst, and then three walks and those four Parry McCluer errors allowed four more runs to cross the plate.
Liberty, which had another big inning with seven runs in the fourth, was led by Spencer Grant, who had two of his team’s eight hits and drove in two runs while also scoring a pair.
Despite the loss in the district tournament, the season is not over for the Blues. Parry McCluer, which sports a 3-14 record after last week’s two setbacks, played Eastern Montgomery in the Pioneer District’s consolation game yesterday, and with only four teams in the Pioneer, the Blues received a bid to the Region 1C tournament. Dates and times for that contest were still pending at press time.
