Get Pitch Slapped’s bats stayed hot despite the cool Tuesday night.
After a sluggish one-run victory Monday night, captain Jay Ford was happy to see some life out of his team as they beat The Thoroughmeds 16-0 to end the regular season undefeated.
“It’s good to see us play like this,” he said. “After winning 1-0 (Monday) night and falling to second in the power rankings it was nice to see us put some hits together and build momentum before we go into the playoffs.”
His team came out swinging.
The men put up five runs to start the game. They were able to take advantage of two defensive miscues that led to two runs and played small ball with a sac fly before a two-RBI double to right center capped off the top of the first.
“It was good to string together hits because we haven’t been able to do that all season,” Ford said. “That first inning we got our first couple guys on base and the hits just started coming in from there.”
The Thoroughmeds got two on in the bottom half but couldn’t produce, something Ford said was a problem for Get Pitch Slapped against the team last season.
“In the bottom of the first we got through it unscathed,” he said. “We weren’t able to do that against them last year. That’s when we could really start putting everything together.”
Get Pitch Slapped put up three more its second time up, with all their runs coming off a big home run that cleared the wall by 10 feet.
Both teams failed to create any real threat after that, only reaching first base until Get Pitch Slapped broke through in the fifth inning. After a leadoff groundout the eventual victors found their stride again.
They put together hit after hit and added eight more runs to their total before being set down.
“In that fifth inning we just started hitting holes,” Ford said. “Once you start doing that you force them to field the ball, and we put a lot of pressure on them with our speed all throughout the lineup. That will put a lot of pressure on the defense and force them to make plays.”
Even with the drop in playoff seeding Ford said Get Pitch Slapped’s performance Tuesday is a good sign of things to come.
“Only getting one run (Monday) night really hurt us in the power rankings,” he said. “It made it a little bit tougher road but definitely getting a lot of hits and scoring a lot of runs is huge momentum going into our game on Monday night for the second round.”
Story by Nick Dolan, Assistant Sports Editor