Bobcat baseball nearly rallies against Swansea
Trailing by five runs in the bottom of the seventh the Bluffton High baseball team nearly completed a comeback in the opening round of the SCHSL Class AAA playoffs Tuesday, but came up just short.
Hunter Eldridge went 1-for-4 batting with a triple and a run scored, Griffin Yeager was 1-for-4 with a double and an RBI and Cameron Bent was 1-for-2 with a stolen base and a run scored.
Swansea's Michael Rish and Luke Sox combined for 12 total strikeouts against Bobcat batters, while Bluffton pitchers Trenton Dailey, Mason Peeples, Seth White and Cody Eldridge combined for six strikeouts and seven walks.
"We were too late, man, we were too late," coach Bryant Kitty said. "We talked about it coming into the playoffs that, you know, good teams will take advantage of mistakes – two-out walks, errors, you've got to be able to play a perfect game at this point going forward."
Swansea center fielder Josiah Sightler smashed a two-run homer to right field on a full count in the first to give the Tigers an early 2-0 lead, before Bluffton answered in their portion of the inning on an RBI infield single from Bent, making the score 2-1 in Swansea's favor.
Just prior to that however, leadoff hitter Sean Sutay took a hard pitch to the back of the head and was down for several minutes. He would not return to play.
"He's our playmaker; he's one of the best athletes on the team," Kitty said of Sutay. "For him to go down, of course that put us in a frenzy of what we're going to do."
"We didn't expect him to be gone the first inning."
Swansea added one more run in the third on a passed ball that allowed Cameron Jones to score, extending the Tigers' lead to 3-1.
Dailey struck out to open the Bobcats' third inning, before Eldridge had a hard shot to right that was good for a triple. A subsequent pop out and strikeout ended the Bobcats' hopes of scoring in the inning, however.
Walked intentionally to open the top of the fifth, Sightler scored from first with two outs on a double to center-right from teammate Alex Sharpe.
Griffin Yeager reached on a throwing error to begin the top of the sixth, and would eventually score after three straight walks sent him across the plate, making it 4-2.
Swansea added three more in the seventh on a bases loaded walk, and an RBI single to short right from Luke Sox that plated two.
Trailing by five headed into the final inning, Eldridge reached first on a fielding error to give the Bobcats a spark. Yeager then hit to the gap in center-right field that allowed Eldridge to score, making the game 7-3.
Nowakowski then followed up Yeager's hit with another shot to center right, this time allowing Yeager to score to narrow the gap to 7-4.
Bent would steal second as he pinch ran for Luka Pulice, who was walked, and eventually crossed the plate following a bad throw to third while attempting to steal another base.
With a runner on first and the tying run at the plate, Swansea's struck out two consecutive Bluffton batters to put down the rally and secure the win.
Bluffton (13-4) will play the loser of the Lake City-Manning matchup on Thursday at a time to be determined.