By Mark Carpenter
People’s Defender
After a regular season that saw them win the Southern Hills Athletic Conference small school division and them move on to defeat Eastern Brown 5-1 in a Division VI district quarterfinal contest, Coach Trey Meade and his Manchester Greyhounds baseball nine saw their season come to an abrupt end last weekend. On May 23, the #5 seeded Greyhounds had high hopes as they hit the field at the VA Memorial Stadium in Chillicothe, facing off with the #4 seeded Southeastern Panthers.
On paper, the two teams seemed evenly matched , but as they say, games aren’t played on paper. Trailing 1-0 after four frames, the Panthers jumped on Manchester pitching for five runs in the bottom of the fifth and rode that wave to a 6-1 victory and a berth in the Division VI district finals.
“I’m proud of our guys,” said Coach Meade in his postgame radio interview. We tested then with our schedule and we just went out there and played our style of baseball night in and night out. We were pretty athletic throughout our lineup and we played to those strengths.”
Senior Luke Applegate got the starting nod for the Hounds and blanked the Panthers for four innings, though struggling with his control at times but working out of jams. The Hounds got the game’s first run and what turned out to be their only run of the night, in the top half of second, mainly due to the speed and hustle of senior Parker Hayslip. After a walk to Carson Inman, Hayslip laid down a bunt single.. A bunt by Braylon Rickett saw Inman forced at third, with Hayslip moving over to second. James Hackathorn grounded out to third and a hustling Hayslip never broke stride and narrowly slid home with the game’s first score.
Applegate issued a pair of free passes in the bottom of the second but worked out of trouble and in the top half of the third, the Hounds threatened to add to their lead, loading the bases with two outs and Hayslip at the plate. Hayslip hit a hard ground ball to shortstop which was turned into an inning-ending force out at second base. Applegate walked three Southeastern hitters in the bottom of the fourth to fill the bases with one out but a caught stealing and a strikeout ended the Panther threat.
In the top of the fifth, Applegate blasted a triple to the left field fence with two outs but was left stranded when Clayton Colvin grounded out to second for the third out, and then the roof caved in on the Greyhounds. In the bottom of the fifth, the uncharacteristically wild Applegate again walked the first two Panthers. A ground out moved both runners up and after a strikeout it looked like the Hounds were going to wiggle out of trouble again. But with two outs, a base hit to left by Carson McWhorter brought home a pair and gave Southeastern the lead for good but they weren’t finished. CJ Huff was hit by a pitch to reload the bases and at that point, Coach Meade pulled Applegate in favor of reliever Braylon Rickett.
Rickett immediately had his own control problems, throwing a wild pitch that allowed Brayden Burns to score and made it 4-1. Yet another wild pitch brought McWhorter home to give the Panthers a four-run advantage.
The Greyhounds went down 1-2-3 in the top of the sixth and with Traevyn Hilderbrand now on in relief for Manchester, the Panthers added one more insurance run to their lead in the bottom half on an RBI two-base hit off the bat of Gage Cheadle.
In what turned out to be their final at-bat of the season, the Hounds went down in order against the offerings of Southeastern’s McWhorter. Hackathorn struck out looking, Kenton Butt grounded out to short and Landen Doyle struck out swinging and just like that, the Greyhounds were eliminated and saw their season come to a close.
In his final game in the blue and gold, Applegate took the loss, going 4 2/3 innings, allowing just two hits, striking out nine, but fought control issues all night, issuing 8 walks. dropping him to 2-3 for the season as the Greyhounds overall closed their spring with a winning record of 13-9. Panthers’ winning pitcher Carson McWhorter pitched four innings in relief. giving up just one hit, walking none and striking out nine.
The district semifinal loss was the final game in the high school career of Manchester seniors Traevyn Hilderbrand, Landen Doyle, Parker Hayslip, Braylon Rickett, and Luke Applegate.
“Our seniors were awesome,” said Coach Meade. “They helped lay the foundation of what we want to build for Manchester baseball. All five of them came in to work every day and did anything we asked of them. They have a lot of things to hang their hat on, back to back SHAC titles for the first time ever. We’ve got that good foundation laid and now we need the younger guys to get ready to come in and work.”
Manchester
010 000 0 —1
Southeastern
000 051 x —6
Manchester Hitting (AB-R-H-RBI): Hilderbrand 2-0-0-0, Applegate 3-0-1-0, C. Colvin 3-0-0-0, Inman 2-0-1-0, Hayslip 3-1-1-0, Rickett 2-0-0-0, Hackathorn 3-0-0-1, Butt 3-0-0-0, Doyle 3-0-1-0, Team 24-1-4-1.
Extra-Base Hits: Applegate 3B
Southeastern Hitting (AB-R-H-RBI): Cosby 4-1-0-0, Baxter 4-0-1-0, Grey 0-1-0-0, Cheadle 3-1-2-2, Burns 0-1-0-0, McWhorter 4-1-1-2, Huff 0-0-0-0, Brown 2-0-0-0, Welch 1-0-0-0, Kessler 2-1-0-0, Team 20-6-4-4.
Extra-Base Hits: Baxter 2B
Manchester Pitching:
Applegate (L) 4.2 IP, 2 H, 5 R, 5 ER, 8 BB 9 K, 104 pitches
Rickett 0.1 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 2 BB 1 K, 16 pitches
Hilderbrand 1 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 1 K, 17 pitches
Southeastern Pitching:
Kessler 3 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 1 K, 49 pitches
McWhorter (W) 4 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 9 K, 49 pitches
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