BASEBALL: West Laurens walks, mistakes in field costly as Troup gets upper hand in game 3 to win second-round series

West Laurens had enough going its way early in the series for a chance to win it, but couldn’t finish strong in a Thursday finale against Troup that brought an end to its season in the second round of the state playoffs. 

The Raiders prevailed 6-4 in a first game Wednesday, but stumbled in the second as Troup won 4-2 to split the doubleheader. A meltdown second inning allowed the Tigers to score seven, and run away with Thursday’s rubber game, 10-2, to clinch the series. 

Troup advances to take on Holy Innocents’ in the GHSA quarterfinals next week, as West Laurens wraps up 2024 with a final record of 21-12 (11-1 region 2-AAAA). 

Walks, numbering nine total, and a handful of miscalculations by defenders in some pressing defensive situations, were the primary culprits for the Raiders in a game 3 that got out of reach early. 

The Tigers capitalized on five walks and a hit batter in a top half of the second inning that turned disastrous for West Laurens. Troup, with just two hits, put seven on the board and chased the Raiders’ first two pitchers from the game. 

The Tigers used their speed and cunning on the base paths to bolster that big lead, and some highlight plays in the field to keep West Laurens from chipping much away, the rest of the afternoon. 

The Raiders were in confident position coming into the day, with two of its strongest pitchers in Kaden Baggett and Kolby Clark lined up to go in game 3, after Troup had gone through six, and used up a majority of the pitching allowance for its best, on Wednesday. As it would turn out, both were out of the game before the end of the second inning. 

Things, however, started quite well for West and Baggett, who came out of the gate hot as he did in the prior week’s game 3 win over Islands that clinched this second-round spot. He once again got his first three outs with no issue, catching leadoff man Garrison Edwards looking and then getting Chase Mosley swinging  to put two away quickly, then coaxing a simple groundout from Davis Moncus to end the first inning. 

But things took a sharp turn south in the second, which began with two walks around the single of Troup’s Courtney Wilson to load the bases. 

West Laurens traded a run for its first out on the ground ball of Torreion Delaney, but couldn’t buy a second one, let alone a strike, in the sequence of ensuing at-bats. 

Ethan Goff drew a third Baggett walk, and Brady Willis worked a 2-0 count before the Raiders made an early move to the bullpen for Clark. His first pitch would hit Willis in the shin to push home a second Troup run. And the next two – Edwards and Mosely – would draw run-scoring walks that made it 4-0. 

A LONG INNING: Outs were hard to come by for West Laurens in the second inning of Game 3, when five walks, two hits and a plunked batter allowed Troup to score the game’s first seven runs, and chase both of the Raiders’ first two pitchers from the game. Kaden Baggett, Kolby Clark and Cohen Cardwell (pictured) each worked a portion of the 11 at-bat inning, which West Laurens couldn’t stabilize until the Tigers had opened a large early lead/DANNY SCARBORO

Clark was lifted for a third pitcher in Cohen Cardwell, who gave up a hit before recording the last two outs of the inning. But the well-positioned triple, on a volley up the left field line against the shift by Davis Moncus, would be Troup’s biggest swing of the series and serve as an effective kill shot. All three runs scored as Moncus slid in safely at third to make the lead 7-0. 

Hitters 10 and 11 of the inning went down quietly, but West Laurens still stared upward from a significant hole – predominantly of its own digging – going to the bottom of the second. 

Simple bad luck ensued for the Raiders at every turn from there. 

Back in the first, it was great running catches by left fielder Cason Spears and center fielder Moncus that robbed potential hits that might have driven in Parker Bryant, who’d singled to lead off an advanced to scoring position on a Jakob Sahli sac bunt, but instead resulted in outs to end the inning. 

Tiger outfielders intercepted a couple more balls attempting to land before the Tigers’ Tripp Cummings got a swinging strikeout to keep the Raiders off the board in the second. 

Troup turned a 4-6-3 double play to answer a leadoff Reid McFadden single in the third, and Delaney rotated back from second to steal a bloop hit from Sahli on the third out to prevent yet another scoring chance and preserve the shutout. 

The Tigers were able to add on an eighth run with an Edwards infield single, a sac bunt and sac fly in the fourth, before West Laurens finally got some runs home in the bottom half. 

Jordan Hall and Jeremiah Baker sandwiched a Cason Pollock walk with singles to load the bases, and Grant Baker grounded into a fielder’s choice for Troup’s second out and an RBI that got West on the board. 

McFadden clobbered his second hit of the game into the left field corner to drive home another run, but Grant Baker stumbled on his turn around third base, and was tagged out in foul territory to end the inning. 

Every subsequent threat for the Raiders, against reliever Demetrius Hardnett, would come up empty. 

The Tigers got a second double play of the afternoon (they also turned two twice behind Hardnett in a complete game to beat Shaw’s Raiders in their round 1 rubber game) on a 6-3 keyed by Delaney to end the fith. Past that point, just two other hitters reached (both in the seventh), but a Hardnett strikeout and – fittingly – a sliding catch in left by Spears, would end the game. 

Troup answered both West Laurens runs in the top half of the fifth, with some more of the baserunning hijinks that they’d used to extract a key run in their go-ahead fifth inning of game 2. 

The play, in effect a steal of home for a runner at third with men at the corners, involved an initial stolen base attempt toward second with a goal of drawing a throw, in the event that the runner would stop just before reaching the bag and create a rundown to occupy infielders while the other snuck home. 

Raider defenders, pursuing Delaney in the second game, and fill-in runners Trey Dean and Parker Townsend in the fifth inning of the third, got caught in the trap all three times as the three speedsters skillfully eluded capture with either some dance moves, or in the case of Delaney and Dean a long chase back toward first that ended with both safely diving back into their original base. 

Townsend, the second man to create the ruse in the fifth of game 3, would be tagged for the second out, but only after Dean had scored to make it 10-2. 

West Laurens out-hit the Tigers 7-5 in game 3, with a 2-for-3 Bryant and 2-for-2 McFadden leading the way at the plate. No Troup hitter had multiple hits, though Moncus finished with four RBIs. 

West’s four pitchers, Ethan Waldrep tossing two innings after a couple and change for Cardwell to round things out, struck out five.  

Cummings and Hardnett struck out two and walked one each. 

The Raiders’ win to start things out in the series hinged on an outstanding pitching performance by Bryant, who gave up only five hits, struck out 13 and walked just one in a complete game. The junior pinned the Tigers with a strikeout of the side in the bottom of the seventh. 

Leading up were some back-and-forths, as Troup resorted to plenty more in its stockpile of ABC baseball tactics to bring home runs. 

The Tigers used a sac bunt to set the table for two-out RBIs on the single of Carson Walker and the double of Fisher Baltzell to crack the scoreboard in the first. 

But West Laurens mirrored the line of two hits and one error to tie in the bottom half, as Bryant led off with a double and Sahli reached on a dropped third strike, which drew a throwing error from catcher Brady Willis that brought Bryant’s runner Jayden Stanley in for a first run. 

Baggett delivered the RBI on a ground ball to score Sahli and tie the game. The Raiders took the lead in the bottom of the third, which Bryant led off with another double. Sahli stroked a single for the go-ahead RBI. 

Troup, though, answered with runs to tie and take the lead in the fourth, and used some more small ball to do it. The Raiders misplayed a grounder from Walker, then couldn’t get to a bunt by Baltzell. Another bunt attempt by the Tigers with runners first and second initially backfied, as the catcher Baggett snagged a pop-up left of the circle for an out. But his throw to catch a moving runner got away, and Townsend scored to tie the game at 3. 

A throw to retire the lightning quick Delaney at first on a dropped third strike gave Baltzell a window to score from third to give Troup the lead. 

West, however, was able to even it back up in the lower half. Pollock singled for a second hit to lead off, and McFadden drove him in with a two-out single to tie it at 4. 

Troup suffered a slight pitching breakdown in the sixth that led to the Raiders’ two go-ahead runs, as Cummings – in a second inning of relief – walked Mason Dunn and was quickly pulled from the game. Spears suffered the same fate after issuing a walk to Pollock, and quickly exiting stage left. 

Kaleb Woodson had a bit more staying power, facing three batters and getting a ground ball from the first in Jeremiah Baker, though failing to get an out on a risky decision to try to get the lead runner on a throw toward third, which was late and left the bases full. 

Woodson walked Hall to bring home a run, and McFadden delivered another RBI single in the next at-bat to make it 6-4. 

Moncus came on to get three quick outs and retire the side. But West Laurens, with the two-run edge, needed only three of its own in the top of the seventh, in which Bryant blew away Delaney, Goff and Willis to end the game. 

The Raiders, as they did in all three of the series, led the hitting 7-5. Bryant, Pollock and McFadden had two hits each to lead them at the plate. The teams committed three errors each. 

Game 2, for West Laurens, wasn’t quite as sharp. 

The Raiders suffered two errors, but each coming in pivotal spots as Troup scored its four unanswered runs during innings 4 and 5 to erase an early 2-0 West Laurens lead. 

McFadden, his usual self in the game 2 start, ran into some trouble spots after swiftly taming the Troup lineup in a first troup through. He faced the minimum in the first three innings, giving up a mere single to Goff in the eight spot, but then picking him off for the third out. 

The Tigers drove in one on a Moncus sacrifice fly in the fourth, following a single and an errant throw, though McFadden got a strikeout and pop up to get out of the situation. 

A walk and two hit batters were key in a nine at-bat fifth inning that just wouldn’t end. 

Another wayward throw got Delaney aboard for Troup after Spears led off with a single. He “advanced to first” on a familiar baserunning gadget to the above, initially a sure out as a Bryant throw arrived on time and target at second, but the runner pulled up and shifted to reverse before being chased by Sahli all the way back, with a diving tag that both came up empty and provided Spears clearance to go for the plate. 

Goff followed with his second base hit of the night to move Delaney into position, and he scored later in the inning on a passed ball. 

Hardnett, who gave up four hits, walked four and struck out five, started out the game for Troup on the hill, but was pulled due to arm soreness right after a leadoff single for the Raiders in the fourth. 

The tough-to-hit Moncus came on in relief again, and allowed only one hit in the final four innings to pick up the win. He lost four batters on walks, but struck out five. 

Hardnett, despite going on the hook for the two runs, wiggled off of it to keep things scoreless in the first and second, when three walks and a hit had a total of five runners aboard for the Raiders. The side was retired in both, with all left stranded. 

West struck for its first run agains on two hits in the third, Pollock’s single preceding an RBI double by Jeremiah Baker. 

McFadden’s base hit in the fourth against Hardnett was followed by a pair of Moncus walks. The Troup freshman struck out two in a row to get within an out of the inning, but issued ball 4 to Grant Baker to bring home a second West Laurens run. 

The Raiders, outhitting Troup 5-4, ended up leaving the bases loaded for a second time in the game, with only a 2-0 lead. A Sahli single in the sixth was all the offense that materialized against Moncus from there. West Laurens finished with 10 runners total left on. 

McFadden struck out two and walked one in his five innings. Cardwell pitched a 1-2-3 sixth.