The Brownwood Lions issued 11 walks, hurled four wild pitches, hit a batter, committed two errors and mustered only a pair of hits in a 12-0, five-inning loss to the District 6-4A baseball champion Stephenville Yellow Jackets Tuesday night at Morris Southall Field.
Stephenville (17-8-1, 10-1) scored five runs each in the top of the second and fourth innings, and added two more runs in the fifth, while Brownwood (10-10, 6-5) did not put a runner on base until the bottom of the fourth inning.
“I certainly didn’t think we would come out flat like we did,” said Lions head coach Brian Harris. “We talk about putting the ball in play, making the routine plays on defense and throwing strikes and we didn’t compete in any of those three areas. This is what happens when you play a good baseball team and you’re not ready to play, they took it to us. For whatever reason we had a mental lapse today and I’ve got to find a way as a head coach to motivate these guys to come back tomorrow and go back to work.”
Hunter Day lasted just three innings on the mound for Brownwood, yielding six runs on two hits with six walks and four strikeouts. Atticus Porter worked an inning and gave up four runs on two hits and four walks, and Byron Foster tossed a frame and surrendered a pair of runs on three hits with one walk.
“That’s not indicative of what Hunter’s been doing his last few outings,” Harris said. “His bullpen session was really sharp yesterday, I liked the way he threw the ball, but it just didn’t translate to the game today.”
Stephenville took a 5-0 lead in the second inning thanks to a pair of hits, four walks and two Brownwood errors. Dylanger Merion doubled home Charlie Hughes, who led off with a base hit, with the first and only run the Yellow Jackets needed. An error and two wild pitches resulted in the other four runs.
In the fourth, Hughes picked up an RBI on a bases-loaded walk, Kyle Styron doubled in a pair, Meiron added an RBI ground out and Corbin Poston chipped in an RBI single.
Back-to-back two-out RBI doubles by Styron and Case Dunavant in the fifth capped the Stephenville scoring.
The first nine Lions were sat down in order by Bryson Dill, who struck out seven and walked one. Brownwood’s first base runner came with one out in the fourth as Gavin Brandstetter was hit by a pitch, then Foster singled with two outs and Day walked to load the bases, but the Lions could not scratch across a run. Xadrian Mares added a two-out double in the bottom of the fifth but was left stranded.
“We let them just take it and we didn’t help ourselves at the plate, we didn’t have competitive at-bats,” Harris said.
The Lions, who will be the third playoff seed from 6-4A, will conclude the regular season at 7 p.m. as they against host Stephenville.
