Call them first world problems. William Monroe coach Mike Maynard wanted to work in a number of arms onto the mound as his team built up a comfortable lead. The only issue was that starter Cody Spencer couldn’t get his pitch count high enough and couldn’t stop getting batters out. The Dragons will have to wait until next week to find out just how much more depth they have on their staff, and to see another team score a run on them. With Spencer’s 12-strike out perfect game, Monroe was able to cruise to a 10-0 win in six innings over Orange County in its home opener.
“We knew that pitching was going to be the strength of this team, but wow,” said Dragons coach Mike Maynard. “Cody was great with his curveball and slider working, and he’s got pretty good velocity too. He works really hard out there. And the defense was great too.”
Spencer was locked in from the start as he struck out four of the first six Hornets batters on his way to a dozen. And on top of his strikeout total, he had just two balls hit out of the infield. He faced 18 batters total and retired them all.
“It feels really good coming out in your first game of the season and throwing a perfect game with your team playing behind you the entire night,” Spencer said. “When I was in the bullpen warming up I could feel it — if I’m shaky there it’s not going to be too good — but tonight I was hitting every location. I was throwing a lot of fastballs away, breaking curveballs inside and then the slider breaking across the outside, which they must have thought was a fastball. It was just about keeping them off balance.”
Jonathan Sexton caught the perfect game in just his second start behind the plate. Three days earlier he caught the Dragons 6-0 combined shutout effort by R.J. Payne, Jacob Tomlin and Brian Bohlman.
“He’s played two varsity games and he’s caught a shutout and a perfect game which is just amazing,” Maynard said. “If we keep pitching well and having our freshman catcher play this well, we could be pretty good.”
On the other side of things, Monroe got started offensively with Toby Collier scoring on a passed ball after he was walked and moved over on the base paths. R.J. Payne then scored on a sacrifice fly to make it 2-0 after one inning. In the third Payne hit a double and was brought home by an RBI single from Hunter Foster. In the next at-bat Spencer helped his own cause with an RBI single to make it 4-0.
“We hit the ball well at times, but didn’t run the bases very well early,” Maynard said. “We had clutch hitting from R.J. and Hunter most the night but we’ve got eight kids back who had a lot of at-bats last year.”
The fifth inning saw Monroe tack on two more runs with a leadoff single from Payne and another single from Charlie Richards. Hunter and Spencer brought in both runners to turn it into a 6-0 lead going into the sixth. The Dragons racked up four runs in the sixth to earn the run-ruling with three straight singles from Collier, Payne and Richards followed by a sacrifice fly by Foster and then Spencer reaching base on an error to make it a 10-0 walkoff affair.
After beating Madison County 11-1 and then Spotsylvania 4-2 on Tuesday and Thursday, errors plagued the Hornets. Orange committed five on the night, but will look to bounce back with the same three opponents next week. The Hornets travel to Spotsylvania Tuesday, then head to Madison on Thursday before hosting Monroe on Friday.
“We did not play the mental game that we needed to be successful,” said Orange coach Dave Rabe. “Couple with playing a good team, we didn’t play our game and so this is the result. We just have to learn from this. It’s early and it’s a long season.”
