By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
YAMHILL, Ore.– Taylor Bradford and the Yamhill-Carlton defense had some kind of Deja Vu on Thursday afternoon in their 3A Special District 3 League Match-Up with Dayton.
On Tuesday, the Tigers held Scio to one hit while their offense built an early 6–0 lead en route to a 6–2 victory. On Thursday, a similar script unfolded: Bradford carried a one-hitter into the sixth inning and helped her own cause with a two-run home run as the offense built a 4–0 lead over the Pirates.
“We had a lot of momentum going into it from the last couple of games. We moved our defense around to make it stronger in certain areas and knowing that we can trust each other more, gave us more confidence to make tough plays and trust each other,” Bradford said, who finished with 13 strikeouts in the game.
Bradford had the Dayton bats off their groove. The Pirates finished with three hits and frequently chased pitches out of the zone and didn’t have the same plate approaches as they did in the two squad’s first meeting on April 6.
“She does a really good job elevating it and making the hitters chase,” Dayton Head Coach Frank Baumholtz. “In our win against them at our place, we were very disciplined. We weren’t swinging at balls out of the zone. Today we were chasing pitches out of the zone, we need to be more disciplined at the plate and that was the deciding factor in today’s game.”
Outside of a few plays that really cost the Pirates runs, the Dayton defense did all they could do to keep the Tigers within reach in Thursday’s game. Rachel Baumholtz and Charly Upmeyer combined for a seven-strikeout performance and held Yamhill-Carlton to three runs on eight hits in an otherwise solid performance on the day.
“Our approach is always, ‘if something bad happens, it’s the next pitch’. The play that happened, that play is behind you and you have to move forward. Defensively, we got to make plays behind our pitchers. I’m not disappointed defensively, I just look at our disciplined approach to the plate. That’s the deciding factor and they’ll have the win and not us,” said Baumholtz. “So we have to prepare and come back, fix the things that we didn’t do well today. We got Scio next week and we got to finish the league season strong. We’re tied now for first, so we have to come ready to play each game and take care of business.”
For Yamhill-Carlton, they wrapped up a busy week 4-0 with quality wins against Scio and Dayton. The Tigers, with the 4-0 win against the Pirates on Thursday, are now tied for first-place in league coming down the stretch with the 3A State Playoffs on the horizon.
“We started early with good energy and we know that’ll give us good results. I think moving forward, we’re going to have to keep doing that,” said Bradford.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
