No. 4 Bearcats continue dominant district stretch

Following two narrow 3-2 wins against Brewer to open district play, the No. 4 Aledo Bearcats have seen their bats become engulfed in flames, and those red-hot bats continued to burn brightly Tuesday night, April 8. As winners of seven of their last eight games coming in, the Bearcats hosted district foe Saginaw. They continued their surge with a quality performance in all phases, winning the contest by a final score of 9-0.

“It’s just been continuing the process, picking up the tools, and getting after it,” Bearcats head coach Chad Barry said. “I think they’re starting to see the fruits of their labor, and I think consistent work produces consistent results over time, and I think they are starting to see and believe in it. When they do things like that, believe in each other, believe in themselves, know their pitchers are going to give them a chance to win, it helps everyone relax and just try to play good baseball.”

Good baseball was prevalent for the orange-and-black as they raced out to an early 5-0 lead in the first inning. Noah Graham belted an RBI double for the first two runs while Dylan Duran’s RBI single a few batters later propelled Aledo to four of its first-inning runs. The early juice at the plate allowed starting pitcher Grayson McKelvey to work efficiently from the mound while the stingy Aledo defense operated effectively behind him.

“When we can put up five runs in the first, it takes teams out of being able to play the short game some, and they know what they’re up against with our pitching staff, so they know four runs is going to be hard to come by most nights,” Barry said. “I think it puts more pressure on them to swing their way into an inning, which plays right into the hands of our defense. That’s what we do, we play defense. If we can get teams out of their rhythm and game plan early, then that really benefits us — and the advantage grows as the game goes on.”

Aledo was able to score four more times throughout the contest, with the exclamation point coming off the bat of Brooks Burdine in the bottom of the fourth inning. Burdine barreled the ball comfortably over the right field wall after he unleashed a booming swing on a full-count pitch. The run was Aledo’s seventh of the night and provided plenty of momentum for the Bearcats to take care of business. McKelvey, who went six innings strong with 15 strikeouts while allowing just one hit. Luke Sandefur impressively secured the final three outs with three consecutive strikeouts.

Aledo collected 10 hits as a team with eight singles, one double, one home run, and seven RBI. Burdine led the charge, going 3-for-4 with one RBI and three runs scored. Duran performed

well with a pair of singles, two RBI, and one run scored while Graham finished 2-for-2 with three RBI. Luke Gladchuk also had an RBI single while Luke Trager scored one run and hit a double. Landon Barnes added a single and a run to the winning cause.

Moving forward, the Bearcats’ aim is to continue their rise with an emphasis on the details as the team remains tied with Granbury atop the district standings.

“We could work on our approach and just know what we’re looking for in certain counts,” Barry said. “For me, your at bat starts well before you hit the on deck circle. You need to pay attention to how their pitcher is pitching against guys — what his slider looks like, what his curveball looks like, and what his fastball is doing — you need to gather all that information before you hit the box. I think you can pick a lot of that up by talking to guys who hit before you and just paying attention to what their pitch sequences look like — know what they are trying to do, what the situation is, what they’re probably trying to induce — things like that. We just need to continually sharpen ourselves.”

Trager goes deep as Aledo plates 14 in 5-inning win over
Fossil Ridge

A combination of productive offense, strong pitching, and quality defense has continued to carry the No. 4 Aledo Bearcats as of late, and the trend continued in the Bearcats’ most recent district outing Friday night, April 4. Aledo finished off its series against the Fossil Ridge Panthers in dominant fashion, following up a 14-0 road win with a 14-0 victory at home.

“Games like this gives us looks at guys coming off the bench to see how they come into a game, which helps us look for some missing pieces along the way,” Bearcats head coach Chad Barry said. “We will need a guy to come in off the bench as a pinch hitter or as a defensive replacement if one of our position players goes into relief. It’s important to add to our depth, keep everyone engaged and everyone is more invested in the program as a whole when we can get opportunities like this.”

Aledo got plenty of contributions from some younger faces such as Kyle Poindexter, Jackson Loos, and Will Casey — among others — en route to its second consecutive 14-0 win, as the Bearcats seemed to crack open the pavement that has resulted in a flowing, productive offense as of late.

“We didn’t really make any changes, but sometimes teams will have ups and downs with the struggles with the bat, and we’ve kind of come out of those struggles during the first two weeks a little bit,” Barry said. “Sometimes, hits are contagious, we’re all scoring some runs and everyone is relaxing at the plate after getting a couple of hits. That pays dividends for us up and down the lineup, and we have a lot of talent on our roster — we could almost have two sets of starters.”

The Bearcats nabbed three early runs aided by a pair of Fossil Ridge errors, and Blake Burdine followed with an RBI double that scored two more for a 5-0 advantage. After that, Noah Graham drove in another run with an RBI groundout to make it 6-0 in the first inning. The Bearcats added two more runs in the second inning with a standup RBI double by Lucas Nawrocki and an RBI single from Burdine.

“Last couple of games, we haven’t been hitting the ball that well, so we decided to come out, have fun, swing the bat at good pitches, and see what happens,” Bearcats outfielder Luke Trager said. “We’ve had a couple 10-plus run games the last two, so it’s exciting for us and good for our confidence with our bats going forward.”

In the third inning, Trager belted a double to the left-center gap that increased the tally to 9-0 and Nawrocki made it 11-0 with a two-run RBI single. In the bottom of the fourth, Poindexter scored on a passed ball while Loos remained on the base paths. Then, Trager put an exclamation mark on the victory by blasting a two-run homer to left center for the final margin of 14-0.

“It’s awesome making plays like that. Whenever you catch a barrel, it’s the best feeling ever,” Trager said. “I’ve been in a slump over the last couple of games, so getting out of that on Tuesday felt amazing. I’m getting my confidence back up and it feels good having the team behind you — I love playing with those guys.”

On the mound, Devin Miller secured the win and kept the Panther bats quiet. He nearly reached a double-digit strikeout total across five innings with only one hit surrendered. Nawrocki also had a big impact at the plate with four RBI.

Aledo (16-5, 5-0) will return to the field for another district game at 7 p.m. Friday, April 11 at Saginaw for the second half of the teams’ home-and-home series.