Scotland baseball beats St. Pauls in 12 innings

LAURINBURG —The Scotland baseball team defeated the St. Pauls Bulldogs in a 7-6 final on Thursday night at McCoy Field. The Scots improve to 3-1 on the season with their second straight win while St. Pauls falls to 1-3 with their third consecutive loss. In a long 12-inning affair, Head Coach Ricky Schattauer was pleased with the fight his team played with throughout the contest and recognized how it required every guy on the team to pull off a win.

“I hope this win right here and the battle brings us together fully as a team,” Schattauer said. “A lot of young guys had to step up and come through for us.”

The Bulldogs would waste no time getting the scoring started as Jaylen Jacobs would get on base with a single and then score on a groundout by Ethan Locklear. Despite a leadoff single from Kaden Hunsucker in the bottom of the first, a leadoff single from Robbie Peed in the second and a combined three walks drawn over the first and second innings, Scotland couldn’t get any runs across.

That would change in the bottom of the third with Dawson Williams getting on base with a single before Maddox Locklear drew a walk. Blane Callahan then hit a ground ball and reached base safely on a fielding error, scoring Williams and Locklear in the process. The Scots would add onto their lead in the home half of the fourth with Jayden Bryant reaching first on a fielding error by St. Pauls, then advancing to second on a sacrifice bunt before the run got across on a groundout and a passed ball.

Unfortunately for Scotland, their 3-1 advantage didn’t even last half an inning as the Bulldogs would score five runs in the top of the fifth while sending nine batters to the plate. They were able to do much of that damage thanks to three Scots errors in the inning as well as two walks. The only hit came on a double from Zayin Hunt.

Thankfully Scotland was able to respond in time, starting with an RBI single from Callahan in the bottom of the fifth to bring home Locklear, who reached second base on a pop fly that turned into an error. Dylan Tilson then delivered a clutch two-RBI single with the bases loaded and two outs in the bottom of the sixth to tie the game 6-6.

The game then went scoreless for five full innings even though the Scots had at least one base runner in each of them. They would finally get the winning run across in the bottom of the 12th on a bunt single from Peed with the bases loaded and one out. Locklear got the inning started with a single, then stole second and advanced to third on an error during the same play.

Scotland had 15 hits as a team in the game and drew 13 walks. Players with multiple hits included Tilson with four, Callahan and Hunsucker with three apiece, and Peed with two. Locklear drew three walks.

Pitching wise, Peed picked up the win in relief with seven innings of scoreless ball while striking outs eight batters and only allowed three hits. Hunsucker started the game and gave Scotland five innings of six-run ball, though none of the runs were earned and had seven strikeouts while only allowing two hits.

Schattauer was thrilled with the pitching efforts from both Peed and Hunsucker. Even though the Scots committed five errors in the game, Schattauer liked how Hunsucker wasn’t impacted by the mistakes made in the field.

“Robbie’s been giving us shutdown innings for the last two years, last year he solidified himself as that first guy out of the pen,” Schattauer said. “Kaden didn’t let the errors behind him affect his strikes.”

The Scots will have a quick turnaround with a road contest against the conference rival Hoke County Bucks on Friday night at 7 p.m. Scotland beat the Bucks at McCoy Field 8-1 on Tuesday night.