Prep Baseball: East Montgomery 7, North Rowan 6

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By David Shaw

dshaw@salisburypost.com

SPENCER — Rob Linder knows baseball — and he insists it's too soon to hit the panic button.

But the North Rowan coach wore a concerned look after the Cavs suffered their third straight conference loss Friday night.

"This is the about the third game where our defense let us down," Linder said after North dropped a 7-6 YVC decision to visiting East Montgomery. "We just have to get better. A lot of teams are gonna beat each other up in this league. It's just a matter of playing defense and winning games."

Two days after edging Carson in a non-conference shocker, the Cavs (4-4, 3-3) committed two errors in the first inning and fell behind 4-0 before the crowd had settled in. Starting pitcher Dakota Brown yielded singles to East's first three batters, committed a balk and watched three runs score on miscues by shortstop Jake Smith.

"We tried to shake it off," Brown said after a decent six-inning stint. "The errors weren't good and the balk, I thought I had stepped off (the rubber), but the umpire said I didn't."

North answered with two unearned runs against winning pitcher Matt Reynolds in the last of the first, when the Eagles made two of their six errors. Brown led off with a screaming, line-drive double to left field and scored on an infield error. Then Wesley Barker was hit by a pitch, took second on a passed ball and third on Matt Mauldin's bouncer into left. He scored when the ball skipped past Eagle outfielder Harley Pollard.

"It was a little choppy out there," said Mauldin, North's left fielder. "You just had to do the best you could."

Winning coach Sean Hassell said East has been a poor defensive team so far this season. The Eagles made five errors in the first two innings last night and another in the third.

"Those are some of the demons we've been battling all year," he said. "We had to overcome a lot of things today."

They did, including a 6-4 deficit after two innings. North tied the score 4-4 when Mauldin laced a one-out double off the fence in left, then took a two-run lead when Hunter Feezor's two-out popup into shallow right field was bobbled and dropped by East Montgomery second-baseman Caleb Myrick.

"We were fortunate," Linder said. "We had the right people up. Mauldin's been hitting in the No. 3 spot because he deserves to be there. And he's getting some good pitches to hit."

North nearly cracked the game open when designated hitter Jeff Nelson, the 10th man to bat in the second inning, ripped a laser toward shortstop Garrett Hassell — the coach's son — with the bases loaded and two away. Hassell saved at least two runs when he went airborne and snared Nelson's hissing line drive that was clearly headed for the left-center gap.

"We made some errors tonight, but that was the biggest play of the game," said Reynolds. "I remember throwing it right down the middle and as soon as I released it, I was already nervous. When (Hassell) caught it, it was an immediate relief. The entire attitude of our team changed after that one play."

East chipped away at its deficit, scoring single runs in the third and fourth innings to pull even. The guests plated the winning run in the top of the fifth, when Dustin McCallum legged out an infield hit and scored on Kevin Bennett's two-out double to left-center.

The rest was up to Reynolds, who used only fastballs and sliders to retire 15 of North's final 16 batters.

"He just got into a groove, found the strike zone and found something that worked," said Coach Hassell. "The more he threw, the better he got."

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NOTES: Both Reynolds and Brown recorded eight strikeouts and no walks. ... Mauldin continues to be North's most prolific hitter. He went 2-for-4 with two RBIs and a stolen base and is batting a robust .536. ... Mauldin and Feezor share the team RBI lead with 11. ... North visits Chatham Central on Tuesday and North Moore next Friday.