Quincy comes alive at the plate

Jacks rack up seven hits, including a home run from Smokey Baughman

QUINCY — Quincy's Zach Aguirre is usually on target, but when he's not, the rest of the Quincy baseball team backs him up.

Tuesday against Cashmere was no different.

After giving up two leads to the Bulldogs, Smokey Baughman, Kasey Curnutt and the rest of the Quincy lineup came through for a 6-3 win that kept the Jacks on pace with an attempt at the CWAC North league title.

It was an offensive performance Quincy head coach Pat McGuire said was worthy of the playoffs, but it was the defense and pitching situations that popped up throughout the game that gave him more to worry about.

"Offensively, I think it was a pretty good game for us," McGuire said. "Defensively, we are still extending innings."

All of Cashmere's runs were the result of errors in the inning or pitcher mistakes. The Jacks committed three errors, walked four batters and hit three Cashmere batters.

That was the bad part. The good part, Baughman and Curnutt helped erase the mistakes with multi-RBI hits that helped seal the win for Quincy.

Cashmere scored first after Matt Caples led off the inning being hit by a pitch, then scored on a single from Tim Jeffers.

Baughman came up in the bottom of the first inning with two on and hit a deep shot to left field for a 3-1 Quincy lead and starting pitcher Aguirre settled down after the first inning to strike out the next three batters.

Aguirre got into trouble in the top of the third after giving up a single to Michael Miller, then hit and walked the next two batters to load the bases with one out. A third-baseman error scored two runs to tie the game at 3-3. Aguirre finished the game with five strikeouts, one earned run, one walk and three hit batters.

"He hit a couple guys and walked a couple guys and that is not a Zach-like performance," McGuire said, then added about his ability to hold Cashmere to three runs: "He is deceptively fast and part of that is his size and the other part is his ability to keep them off balance."

Quincy responded in the bottom of the third behind Curnutt, who hit a two-run double to deep center field. The Jacks added another run in the sixth after Aguirre led off with a double, advanced to third and scored on a third baseman error to push Quincy to 6-3 in the game.

The Jacks' freshman pitcher Kelly Wells ran into trouble trying to get the save in the seventh after walking two straight batters with two outs. McGuire brought Curnutt in to close the door, only to walk the next batter before striking out Levi Parkins to end the game.

"I am a little disappointed with the fact that we aloud a couple innings to go long on us," McGuire said about the winning, adding that Quincy should have walked away from this game with a shutout.