Valley Cubs win series
- Updated: April 25, 2015
[corner-ad id=2]Alexandria jumps on Mortimer Jordan early to take Game 3; travels to Pleasant Grove next
By East Alabama Sports Today
KIMBERLY — The bus ride over was relaxed, but business-like. The players on the Alexandria baseball team knew this was no pleasure trip.
The Valley Cubs had one job to do – win a playoff series – and they got it done.
The Cubs returned to Mortimer Jordan on Saturday, jumped on their hosts early and scored a 10-4 win to clinch their Class 5A series and advance to the third round. They will be on the road again, this time to Pleasant Grove for Friday’s 5 p.m. doubleheader.
“We really hit their guy well early and they made a couple miscues,” Alexandria coach Andy Shaw said. “Taylor Shaddix really threw well and the defense made plays behind him.
“It was no different approach than (Friday) night, but things went our way. We’d been in this situation before. Game 2 is the game. You want to get that one to have momentum going into that third game or you go home. We weren’t worried.”
Not when they got the pitching Shaddix gave them or the hitting their lineup provided. Shaddix pitched 6 2-3 innings before Dalton Warren came on for the final out. At the plate, five players had multiple hits.
Dalton Cobb was 2-for-4 with an RBI. Justin Whitley had three hits and two RBIs. Derrik Turner, Will Reaves and Cody Dodd all had two hits and two RBIs.
The Cubs lost the first game of the series Friday in 12 innings, but bounced back to even the series on Justin Whitley’s complete-game shutout.
They settled this one early, jumping on the Blue Devils 9-0 after three innings. In the first, Whitley doubled home Cobb and Reaves singled home Whitley. They scored four in the second with Whitley, Turner and Dodd collecting RBIs, and added three in the third.
“The kids were very loose, having a good time on the bus over,” Shaw said. “We were hoping to hit a little better than we had been – we’d kind of been in a little funk – but we hit it well. I don’t have any answer, I think it’s just baseball. You go through things. We just hit it well today and it became kind of contagious.”
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