It was a fight all the way but the Kennedale Wildcats couldn?t muster enough fire power to push them pass Stephenville in an area round UIL contest last night at Stephenville, losing 3-2.
Kennedale ends the baseball season as bi-district champs and a second place finish in District 6/3A with an overall record of 20-11-1, 7-3. {{more}}
Kennedale had hoped to take this second game in the best of three series to continue their playoff run. Stephenville dashed that by allowing only 3 hits and Kennedale contributed with 3 errors.
The game was scoreless through 2 innings when Stephenville managed to get a run across in the bottom of the 3rd. They repeated this one run success in the fourth and sixth innings.
Austin Eggleston for Kennedale had a decent game allowing two earned runs, six hits and three walks while striking out five over six innings of work. With Kennedale’s hitting and base running skills, this normally would mean a victory for the Cats. However, Stephenville did a really good job of silencing the Wildcat batters by allowing only 6 hits in this two game series.
The Cats did put together some challenges. In the fifth Tyler Perez started the inning off with a single. this was followed by Shane O?Connor reaching on a fielder?s choice (hard ground ball) putting Kennedale in scoring position. After a pop-up out by Eggleston, TJ Aguilar grounded out but moved Perez to third and O?Connor (as the tying run) to second. Aaron Williams? line drive single to right field scored Perez and moved O?Connor to third. A line drive out to centerfield ended the rally.
The Cats tried to get another rally going in the top of the 7th when with one out, Steven Murchinson hit a double to centerfield. The next batter, Eggleston, grounded out but moved Murchinson to third. With two outs and a runner on third, Aguilar reached on a ground ball error and Murchinson scored. But a Stephenville relief pitcher in, Aaron Williams was forced into a hard ground out to short on a 2-2 count.
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