Pinecrest pitcher Seth Maness came into Thursday’s showdown against Scotland County with a 6-0 record, allowing only five earned runs in 47 innings. Scot starter Chris Patterson was 4-0 and unscored upon in 21 innings.
The visitors hit the ball hard in the first inning against Maness, and coupled with three Patriot errors jumped out to a 4-0 lead. A pair of solo homers by Ryan Summerford helped the Patriots close the gap to 4-3 before the Scots wrapped up a 9-4 victory with five runs in the last two innings.
The two teams whacked a total of 23 hits (12 by the Scots), including a two-run homer by the visitors’ Caleb Sutton in the seventh. The first loss in Mid-Southeast-ern Conference play for the Patriots dropped them into a tie for first place with Scotland at 7-1.
Pinecrest coach Jeff Hewitt said that he got chills from looking at the crowd that filled all of the bleachers and lined both foul lines.
“The first inning was tough for us,” he said. “We talked about it as a team, that if we could stay out of the big inning, we’d be in the ball game. I thought it might have been nervous jitters. Gosh, I looked around and everywhere the yellow tubing was, there were fans. It was unbelievable.”
Maness struck out 11 and didn’t allow an earned run when the Patriots won 2-1 in Laurinburg last month. Three of the four Scot runs in the first inning on Thursday were unearned, but they also reached him for four hits, including a two-run double down the left field line by Scott Myers.
“We prepared for him a lot better this time,” said Scot catcher Parker Bangs, who went 0-for-3 in the first meeting. “We had never seen him before. This time we actually knew what we had to work with. We had the curve set on what he threw on the pitching machine pretty much all week.”
Maness, who was clocked as high as 91 mph on one of the pitching guns in operation, stiffened, holding the visitors hitless for the next three innings. Summerford brought life to the Pinecrest partisans with a long homer to left-center in the bottom of the second.
Russell Blue followed up the homer with a single, but was doubled up on a ground ball hit to short by Justin Richardson. Josh Haley and Maness kept the inning going with singles. Haley eventually scored on a wild pitch, making it 4-2.
The Scots loaded the bases with none out in the fifth, but Maness escaped by striking out Derrick Lowery and Tanner Smith, and inducing Chris Patterson to ground out third to first. Summerford then led off the bottom of the fifth with another home run to left-center, cutting the deficit to one run.
“When we got to 4-3 in the fifth, I thought, now we’ve got something,” Hewitt said. “We had a tough sixth inning — gave up too many runs. When you play a team like this, the error spot has to stay at zero. You can’t give them what we gave them.”
A weird three-run sixth for the Scots included only one ball hit out of the infield, a sacrifice fly by Liles. There were two bunt hits, two other infield hits and a hit batsman.
Patterson was replaced on the mound by Lowery with two outs in the fifth after allowing nine hits. The Patriots got one run back on a double by Maness and a single by Eric Shinn in the sixth, making it 7-4.
But Lowery struck out four batters in the inning, including one that reached base on a wild third strike. The two base runners the Patriots stranded were their 12th and 13th of the game.
Scotland coach Tommy Britt came to the game expecting a score of the 4-3, 3-2, 2-1 variety.
“Maness is an outstanding high school pitcher and I would imagine someone is going to be recruiting him very soon,” Britt said. “Our kids did a good job jumping on him early and getting up 4-0. Chris Patterson kept us in the game and Derrick Lowery got us out of a jam. It was a great high school baseball game, just like the first one was.”
Patterson also hit the 90 mph mark with one of his pitches, but Bangs, who is signed to play at the University of South Carolina next year, called it an offensive night for both teams.
“If the fastball was out over the plate, we were hitting it — no matter what speed,” he said. “They got to Chris and we got to Seth.”
Scotland (14-1) was ranked third and Pinecrest (11-3) eighth in last week’s 4-A state poll.
The Patriots face another tough game on Monday when they meet Greenville Rose in the first game of the Crystal Coast Tournament near Wilmington.
They are the defending champions of the tournament.
“I feel like we can stay with top echelon teams,” Hewitt said. “We proved that tonight. The score maybe doesn’t show it when you look in the paper, but if you were here, we hit some very good pitching.
“We’re coming out of this feeling very good about the way we’re playing baseball.”
Maness and Blue each finished with three hits for Pinecrest, while Haley and Summerford had two apiece.
Ryan Norton and Myers hit safely three times each for the Scots. Maness surrendered 10 hits, allowed four earned runs, struck out seven and walked none in six innings.
Adam Johnson struck out the side in the Scot seventh, but also gave up Sutton’s two-run homer.
R H E
Scotland 4 0 0 0 0 3 2 — 9 12 2
Pinecrest 0 2 0 0 1 1 0 — 4 11 5
Patterson, Lowery (5) and Bangs; Maness, Johnson (7) and Shinn; WP — Patterson 5-0 LP — Maness 6-1. Leading hitters: (S) Norton 3-5, 2 runs, RBI, Lowery 2-4, run, RBI, Myers 3-4, 2 2B, 2 runs, 3 RBI, Sutton 1-3, HR, 2 RBI (P) Maness 3-4, 2B, run, Haley 2-4, run, Summerford 2-4 2 HR, 2 RBI, Blue 3-3.
