VALDOSTA, Ga. – Blazer baseball's bats remained red hot on Saturday in a doubleheader sweep (11-1, 13-6) that capped off a perfect weekend for Valdosta State against the Shorter Hawks in Gulf South Conference Baseball action at Billy Grant Field.
The Blazers used eight home runs over the course of the day to improve their weekend total to 11 long balls, and
Dalton Duty added two more monster shots to a weekend in which the Blazer right fielder hit .600 with a 6-for-10 effort at the plate with four home runs, a double, and eight RBI's.
Kellan Bailey gave the Blazers their second straight complete game performance on the hill in the game one victory. Bailey dealt seven strong innings with six strikeouts and just four hits allowed, which improved the VSU starter to 4-2 on the season.
Bailey received plenty of help at the dish, with 11 runs for the Blazer offense on eight hits. The Blazers plated runs in all but two of their six chances during the abbreviated contest, and Head Coach
Greg Guilliams' squad put plenty of pressure on Shorter pitchers Jacob Ramos and Tyler Cates by way of the long ball.
Chipper Andzel chased Ramos in the bottom of the fifth, in fact, with a leadoff shot, before
Ryan Smith followed later in the half inning with a three run blast to give VSU a comfortable 8-1 advantage.
One inning later, Duty added on with three additional RBI's after connecting for what proved to be the game winning shot in the bottom of the sixth after
Scott Mathews drew a one out walk and Andzel was hit by a pitch.
The Blazers held momentum in game two after Mathews led the bottom of the first off with a single, followed by a
Marcus Sigmon walk and a base hit by Duty. With the bases loaded,
Cliff Bryant took advantage of the opportunity with a two-run single to put VSU on top 2-0 early.
Shorter got a run back in the top of the second with a Greg Gladden homer, and the Hawks took a 6-3 lead in the top of the third after scoring five runs on four hits and a Blazer error. The lead was short-lived, however, as Valdosta State rebounded to score four runs of their own, thanks to two run shots off the bats of both Duty and Smith to knot the skirmish back up at 6-6.
One inning later, the Blazers capitalized on three Shorter errors for a decisive fourth inning, in which the Blazers scored three additional runs. VSU left no room for doubt in the sixth, as Sigmon led off the frame with several two-strike foul balls before crushing a solo shot over the left field wall.
Jaykob Graham kept the rally going two batters later with a mirror image of Sigmon's homer, and
Isaiah Aluko crushed another blast over the right center field wall two batters later to finish off a weekend in which the Blazers outscored the Hawks 35-11.
"One of our goals is to make postseason play, and our success this weekend puts us in a much better position to pursue that," said Guilliams following the pair of wins on Saturday. "Hitting is contagious, and we got hot swinging the bats. Next thing you know, everybody started feeling good about themselves and good things started happening. This is a mature group of guys, and when we got down in that third game tonight, they didn't panic. You may not always come away with a win the way we did tonight, but mature teams don't panic in those situations, and we certainly didn't tonight."
Beau Blair notched the victory on the mound in game two to move to 1-1 on the year after pitching two scoreless innings midway through the contest, while Michael Weiksner took the loss for Shorter to fall to 2-2 on the season.
With the weekend sweep, the Blazers improved to 14-9 overall and 7-5 in conference play. The Hawks dropped to 10-13 overall and saw their GSC record fall to 4-7.
Next up for Blazer baseball, it's a midweek non-conference matchup against Georgia Regents, scheduled to begin at 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday in Augusta, Ga.
