Timely hitting and solid pitching push Darlington past South Florence Gold

Darlington Post 13 starting pitcher Jalin Mullins pitched a shut-out for the first six innings of the game against South Florence Gold. Photo by Drake Horton

By Drake Horton, Contributing Writer

Darlington Post 13 picked up another win in junior legion play this week, defeating South Florence Gold 6-3 this past Tuesday, June 13.

Post 13 jumped on South Florence quick in the bottom of the first inning, capitalizing on Gold’s mistakes on the mound that let one run score on a wild pitch and another off of a single by Keyshawn Taylor.

Wild pitches and hit-by-pitch were the story of the game for South Florence’s pitching staff as the bad fortune in the first inning showed its ugly face again in the third. Rance Hatchell was able to drive in Darlington’s third run of the game off a sacrifice fly that was setup by two hit batsmen and one wild pitch.

Darlington excelled in situational hitting like that all night and picked another run off of another sacrifice fly in the fourth inning when Cameron Galloway knocked in Mike Dixon, who had reached third on a wild pitch. Garrett Knight added an RBI single in the inning to extend Post 13’s lead to 5-0.

“Overall we gave some guys some opportunities to play tonight who haven’t been playing a whole lot and they came through,” Darlington head coach Dennis Gearhart said. “We put down some good sac bunts and sac flies.”

Post 13 loaded the bases in the bottom of the fifth off of two walks with a hit batsmen sandwiched in between and just like all of the other times in the game, Darlington came away with another run on another situational hitting situation as Dixon hit a groundball to second base resulting in a RBI fielder’s choice.

Despite the six runs and well executed situational hitting, Gearhart still believes that his team is leaving too many runners on base once they reach scoring position.
“We still need to do a better job of hitting with runners in scoring position,” Gearhart said. “We’re leaving way too many guys on bases.”

South Florence made it somewhat interesting in the top of the seventh. Down by six, Gold scored three runs, two off of starter Jalin Mullins and one off of reliever Jaques Mullins, but that was as close as they would get to Darlington.

Jalin pitched brilliantly for the first six innings, throwing shutout baseball before running out of gas in the top of the seventh.

“Jalin did a great job,” Gearhart said. “I think he got a little tired there at the end, but he hasn’t pitched a whole lot.”

While the win was a non-region game, it still shows that Post 13 is improving with each game as they are now winners of four of their last five games following this win over South Florence.

“We seemed to be getting better and better as each game goes on, hopefully that continues,” Gearhart said.

Recap: Darlington defeated West Florence 7-0 on Monday, June 12.

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