Error-prone Barons blow lead, game in season opener

MOUNT VERNON -- No lead is safe in baseball, and the Brewton-Parker College Barons discovered that the hard way in their season opener Tuesday, Feb. 3, by letting a seven-run, fourth-inning lead turn into a final 11-9 loss to Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) at Grayson Park in Savannah.

“The defense was horrendous,” said Barons coach Chad Parker. “Without errors we would have won by four or five runs.”

The Barons got off to a great start in the game behind the pitching of junior right-hander Ashley Hooks, who held the host Bees scoreless for the first three innings as the Barons compiled a 7-0 lead.

Then in the bottom of the fourth, six hits by the Bees, two hit batsmen and two BPC errors allowed the home team to score seven runs and tie the game.

After that, “everything that could go wrong did go wrong,” Parker said. “We made a bunch of boneheaded plays out there.”

The Barons finished the game credited with five errors officially, but Parker said they did not tell the full story. “There were many plays that should have been made that weren’t that did not end up in the error tally,” Parker said.

Still, the offense fought back after SCAD scored a run on a homer in the fifth inning and added two more in the sixth to take a 10-7 lead. The Barons came back and scored one run in the seventh and another in the eighth to make it a one-run game.

The Bees iced the victory by getting their final run of the game in the bottom of the eighth, leading to the final 11-9 score.

Senior left-handed pitcher Rich Fallet was credited with the win for SCAD. Brewton-Parker junior right-hander Zane Miller of Marietta absorbed the loss after giving up five runs, only two of them earned, off five hits.

The offense was a bright spot for the Barons, who accumulated 17 hits in the game. “Offensively we did a lot of big time stuff,” said Parker. “We manufactured runs, hit with two strikes, hit with two outs, hit ahead in the count and stole (four) bases.”

Junior Jeremiah Barrow of Eldorado, Ill., led the hitting for the Barons by going 4-for-6 with three doubles and an RBI. Junior Chris Brown of Bowden was 3-for-4 at the plate, while sophomore Madison Herrin of Waynesville went 2-for-4, junior Jonathan Davis of Savannah was 2-for-5 and sophomore Justin Dover of Cartersville was 1-for-5 with a double that drove in 2 RBI.

Senior Dale Brunett of Mountain Home, Idaho, a newcomer to the team, hit a double for an RBI late in the game.

The Bees improved to 1-2, while the Barons next play games against Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla., at 4 p.m. Friday and 1 p.m. Saturday. 

-BPC-