Bearcats rough up Rider in regular season finale

After struggling to be consistent throughout the first half of districts, Aledo’s figured it out at the perfect time. Winners of five straight District 5-5A games, the Bearcats (21-10 overall, 9-3 in districts) put an exclamation point on their 2023 regular season campaign with a 4-1 home victory over Wichita Falls Rider on Saturday, April 29.

“We’ve been preaching the need to be consistent all year,” said Bearcat head coach Chad Barry. “We seem to have found it in the last couple of weeks. This time of year, you need to be playing your best baseball. You need to be building to your potential and have some momentum going into the playoffs. I feel like we’ve accomplished that over the last two weeks.”

Aledo’s primary area of concern with a lack of consistency for much of the season has been at the plate. Too often early in district play Bearcat hitters tried to do too much with a single swing of the bat.

“We’ve been trying to get the kids to buy into what we want to do,” Barry said. “Yeah, everybody wants to see you hit a home run, and that’s great. But home runs are not going to be what we hang our hat on. We’re going to hit singles up the middle. Our gap-to-gap approach is what is going to carry us offensively. I’ve felt like over the last couple of weeks we’ve done a really good job overall up-and-down the lineup of hitting to the right-center alley and the left-center alley. It seems like it’s kind of started to come together for us lately. This is the right time for that to happen.”

Since Aledo’s district win streak started back on March 14, the Bearcats have outscored opponents 38-11. The lone home run for the Bearcats in that span, an inside-the-parker, came when the streak began against Northwest as Trace Mazon motored around the bases after hitting a deep fly to right field that accounted for a pair of runs.

The other 36 runs the Bearcats have scored in the last five district games have been the result of plate discipline, taking what opposing pitchers have given them in terms of walks, and stringing together hits in run-scoring opportunities.

“We’ve started to realize when we quit trying to yank everything down the line, we’re having a lot more success through the lineup,” Barry said. “We’re a lot tougher outs. And now you’re getting more fastballs because we’ve got guys on base. Pitchers are having to challenge us more.”

The trio of doubles collected by Andrew Cambre, Ryan Jones, and Mazon during the matchup against Rider are prime examples of what happens when pitchers are forced to challenge quality hitting, as Barry alluded to. Those opportunities start with players like Brooks Burdine drawing a nine-pitch walk in one inning after having bunted for singles on two different occasions earlier in the game.

Doing whatever it takes to manufacture runs is one thing. But dependable pitching and fundamentally-sound defense have turned the Bearcats into a true triple-threat heading into the playoffs. With the top seed in the district already locked down regardless of whether Aledo won or lost to Rider, Barry threw three different pitchers across seven innings.

“The result of [Saturday’s] game had no bearing on our finish in district,” he stated. “It was just a pride thing. We felt like we had a couple kids who needed to get back on the mound, and hadn’t been on the mound a whole lot in the last week or so. We needed to get them some work. We felt like with the district race already wrapped up, this was an opportunity to do that against a good-hitting ball club.”

Robert Burk got the start for the Bearcats with another exceptional outing. Save one walk, Burk had a clean sheet in his three innings of work.

Bryce McCain came in from the bullpen to start the fourth inning. McCain threw two innings giving up a single run as he picked up the win for the Bearcats on the mound.

Luke Saunders closed the door on Rider as he collected a game-high five strikeouts in two innings of work.

Now the Bearcats turn their focus to the playoffs. The first order of business is a best-of-three, bi-district series against Trimble Tech (11-15) this week. Thursday’s game will be at Arlington Heights. Friday will be a home game for the Bearcats. Both of those games start at 7 pm with Game 3 on Saturday at noon in Aledo, if needed.

 

Aledo 4, Wichita Falls Rider 1

Saturday, April 29

Rider	000	010	0	-	1	2	0
Aledo	000	211	X	-	4	5	1

Aledo hitting: Boyd Thompson BB, RBI; Trace Mazon 1-for-2, 2B, RBI, BB; Bosten Dwinell BB; Andrew Cambre 1-for-3, 2B, RBI; Ryan Jones 1-for-2, 2B, BB, RBI; Brooks Burdine 2-for-2, BB.

Aledo pitching: Robert Burk 3.0 IP, BB; Bryce McCain 2.0 IP, H, R (earned), 2 BB, 3 K; Luke Saunders 2.0 IP, H, BB, 5 K.