By Lonnie Turner
The McLeod Health Marlin’s #6 is tagged out at home in the Tuesday, May 5, game against the Burger King Braves. (Photos by Johnnie Daniels/THE DILLON HERALD.)
With a week and a couple of days left in the regular season of Kiwanis Dixie Youth Baseball, both Major and Minor Leagues have come a little closer in the standings!
In the Minors, ACE Hardware (11-2) lost for the second time this season, taking it on the chin from the Pepsi-Cola Blue Jays, 3-1, on Tuesday. Following that loss, Burger King (10-3) edged the McLeod Health Marlins by the same 3-1 score, which sets up a showdown between the two leaders for this coming Friday evening at 5:15 with the ACE Tigers holding a one-game lead.
Both teams are idle until the Friday game and next week ACE and Burger King will meet again on Tuesday and the final game for ACE will be against McLeod Health on Thursday. Burger King will go up against Pepsi-Cola in the Minor League final regular season game at 5:15 on Friday.
In the Major League, the first half Champion Dillon Family Dental Giants (5-0) are just one game ahead of the Dillon Internal Medicine Hurricanes (4-1) with three games left in the second half. The Canes will play the Feed and Farm Store Rangers (1-3) on Friday, while the Giants are the home team against the Yankees (2-3) in the nightcap. The Giants and the Hurricanes will meet for the final time in Thursday’s lone Major League game at 7:15.
In the ACE Tiger’s loss on Tuesday, the Pepsi Blue Jays scored two runs in the top of the sixth inning to go ahead of the Tigers, 3-1, and Cade Williams, in relief of Blue Jays starter Jeremy Byrd, retired the Tigers, leaving two runners on base in the bottom of the inning to get the pitching win.
Luke King had two hits in three trips to the plate for the winners and “T” Davis tripled in the only run for the Tigers in the second inning. Qua Morrison, Williams, and Holden Matthews had other hits for the Jays and Jacob English singled off Williams in the fifth inning.
For Burger King in their 3-1 win over McLeod, Bryce Patterson singled twice in two official plate appearances and picked up the save for Braves starter Nate Ford, who left the mound with a 2-1 lead after three innings. Hayden Perritt and Ahmad German added singles for the winners and McLeod had only one hit, a lead off single by Leo Garcia in the top of the second inning. The Marlins rallied in the bottom of the sixth for one run, but left the bases loaded to end the game!
The Major League has featured the long ball this season with three batters, with the Giant’s Noah Carter, the Dillon Meat Center Red’s Gage Hunt, and Cooper Lane of the Hurricanes tied with five home runs each. In all, the Majors batters have clouted 30 round trippers and the minor League has added eight, most of which were in the park homers.
Noah Carter leads the pitching chart with a 7-0 record with 99 strikeouts and an earned run average of 0.71. Zach Hunt leads the Minors with an 8-1 record, 85 strikeouts, and a 1.41 ERA. Bryce Patterson has notched a 5-0 record with an ERA of 2.40.
Front runners in the batting department are Zach Hunt in the minors with a 0.667 average at 18-for-27, and 0.750 average at 24-for-32 in the Majors. Gage Hunt of the Reds is also hitting over 0.700 with a 0.706 average at 24-for-34.
Photos by Johnnie Daniels/THE DILLON HERALD. Click the images below to view at full size!
