Orange County baseball’s Canon Davies knew it was a big spot. After allowing one run in the ninth inning, he was suddenly in an even bigger spot.
“It was huge, there’s a lot of energy going, trying to get the win,” Davies said. “It’s just deep breaths. I just had to make the pitches.”
But Davies rose up and with the tying run at second and the game-winning run at first, came up with a strikeout to help Orange escape with a 4-3 victory over Albemarle Wednesday night.
It was that kind of night for the Hornets, where several players shook off mistakes to make big plays. The Hornets clearly aren’t interested in getting bogged down in plays that don’t go their way. After Tre Smith couldn’t haul in a couple of balls from his spot in centerfield in the second inning and Albemarle scratched out a run in the process, he didn’t let it impact what he could do on offense.
Smith turned around in the next inning and with the help of a Bradley Hanner sacrifice fly and some solid base-running, scored to extend the Orange lead to 3-1 in the third. The Hornets employed an aggressive baserunning strategy against the Patriots.
“It lets me show off my speed and what I can do on the basepaths,” Smith said. “I can get an extra base every now and then.”
Smith scored again in the top of the seventh to extend the Orange lead again, this time to 4-2, scoring from second on an overthrow and beating out a play at the plate. It ended up being a critical run, helping Davies escape with the save.
Joel Wright also helped spark that aggressive approach, scoring in the second on a baited throw to second base as Orange manufactured and scratched out runs all night, taking advantage of four Albemarle errors.
It helped of course that the Hornets had ace Bradley Hanner on the mound as the senior struck out 10 and didn’t allow a single earned run in six innings of work while issuing just four walks and allowing four hits.
“We felt real comfortable knowing that Bradley could come in and make it go down because he does every night,” Smith said. “He’s a really big part of our team.”
Albemarle, meanwhile, couldn’t overcome that rash of errors and also left 10 runners on base, struggling to get critical hits when the Patriots needed them.
“I thought we squared up a lot of baseballs tonight we just could not score when we had runners in scoring position,” said Albemarle coach Jimmy Bibb. “That killed us.”
The lack of timely hitting prevented the Patriots from taking advantage of a strong outing on the mound by Scott Reid. Reid didn’t allow any earned runs, gave up just two walks and five hits while striking out four in 6.2 innings of work. Reid also led the offense with a pair of doubles, but Albemarle couldn’t squeeze out much else against Hanner.
“Scott and Hanner are both quality pitchers,” Bibb said. “Four unearned runs (though), you can’t do that against (Hanner).”
Ian Haney managed the Patriots’ lone RBI for the Patriots while Connor Moriarty went 2-for-3 and scored twice. For Orange offensively, Hanner went 2-for-4 with his RBI while Wright managed to go 1-for-2 with a walk.
Both squads face a quick turnaround with the Patriots hosting Louisa Thursday while Orange takes on Spotsylvania at home the same night.
