Jackets walk off in win over Trojans
Apr. 5—A heavily favored Lee County baseball team had to dig down deep to overcome a former conference rival as the week got under way Monday evening.
The Yellow Jackets were forced to rally from 2-0 and 3-2 deficits to pull even late in their home game with Harnett Central before finally pulling out a 4-3 victory on a walk-off double from BJ Brown in the bottom of the eighth inning.
With one out in the inning, Walker McDuffie struck out on a wild pitch from Trojans pitcher Rylan Wester and managed to run to first base before the ball could be recovered. This brought up Brown, who worked the count full and then lined a ball into center field for a double that drove in McDuffie with the winning run. It was the only time in the game in which Lee (11-3 overall) held a lead.
The Yellow Jackets will host and then travel to Richmond (10-3, 6-2) tonight and tomorrow night to complete their week. The games are very important in the Sandhills Athletic Conference race, where both the Jackets and Raiders trail Pinecrest by one game in the loss column.
On paper, Monday's non-conference matchup strongly favored Lee, which ranks as one of the top teams in the 3A East. Central, on the other hand, is in the middle of the pack in the All-American 3A/4A and came in 5-7 after two losses to Terry Sanford, another top-10 team in the East.
In the early part of the game, Lee County was bamboozled by Central's starting pitcher, junior Layton Babb, who has emerged as a strong option on the mound for the Trojans after appearing as a pitcher just once in his first two years on the team. Babb is averaging 12.7 strikeouts per nine innings of work, and sailed through his first four innings of the game allowing just two hits, one of them an infield single.
While Babb was handcuffing the Jackets, his teammates had been giving Lee starter Nick Pope trouble, and Pope wasn't getting any help from his own, who kept committing errors behind him. He had to pitch around two of them in the third inning alone, and in the fourth, leadoff man Helder Bejarano reached when the Jackets booted a bunt and allowed him to make it all the way to second base.
Bejarano moved up on a successful sacrifice, then scored the game's first run on a wild pitch. Kaleb Watkins then walked and scored with two out after a throwing error on a single by Wester.
It wasn't until the bottom of the fifth that the Jackets were able to get to Babb. Carson Beal started it with a full-count, one-out walk. McDuffie then walked on five pitches, and it was clear that Babb was having control issues when Brown then walked on four pitches to load the bases. Central coach Zachary Bingham stuck with his man, and he caught Dylan Kelly looking on a 3-2 pitch for the second out. However, Luke Sheets was up next, and he delivered a single to left that drove in Beal and McDuffie to tie the game.
Central responded, with more co-operation from Lee's defense, after two singles put runners on the corners with two out. Pope got Wester to ground to second, but another error followed and let in a run before Pope struck his way out of the jam.
Lee tied it again in the next half-inning. Thomas Frazer made up for the error he'd just committed with a leadoff single, and got to third after a walk to Blake Carlyle and a single by Beal. With the bases loaded and one out, McDuffie grounded out to get Frazer home.
Sheets singled and made it into scoring position in the last of the seventh, but couldn't make it home. Pope left the game after seven innings and 104 pitches, in which he allowed six hits, struck out six with just one walk, and did not allow any earned runs. Blane McDonald came in for the top of the eighth and struck out the side, allowing the Jackets a second chance at the win.
Lee had seven hits in the game and three of them came from Sheets, who drove in two runs. Brown also reached three times, on his game-winning double and two walks.
