The Holtville baseball team fought and clawed its way back into the game, but Chilton County’s small ball offense was too much to handle on Thursday afternoon.
Chilton County beat Holtville, 11-7, in a non-division game over the two team’s Spring Break. The Tigers (4-8) scored nine runs across the fifth, sixth and seventh innings to take a commanding lead.
“We just didn’t make plays when we needed to make plays,” Holtville coach Scott Tubbs said. “They hit ground balls, and we just didn’t make the plays. You aren’t going to win many when you do that.”
After being down, 7-2, in the fifth, Holtville (14-4) scored five runs to tie the game back up, but Chilton County wasted no time taking the lead back.
The Tigers led off the top of the sixth by reaching base via error, and Holtville’s Sam Silas was pulled from the mound. Senior submarine pitcher Kason Shaffer came in to pitch and was able to get ground balls, but most were either just knocked down in the infield or thrown to the wrong base.
Four straight Chilton County hitters hit choppers or ground balls into the infield, and the Tigers scored two runs because of it. The same happened in the top of the seventh inning, with three infield singles and a single to left field scoring two more runs to put the Tigers up, 11-7.
Six of the eight batters that put the ball into play off Shaffer didn’t make it out of the infield.
“Some of those were high choppers and some of those were tough plays to make,” Tubbs said. “Those are still plays we need to make. We never should have given up nine runs in the last three innings. That’s just not making plays and not being efficient on the mound and not being competitive at the plate. Everything that you can imagine is going wrong is going wrong.”
Holtville, which is currently ranked the No. 1 team play in AHSAA Class 5A by PBR Alabama, has now lost three of their last four games to Chilton County, Beauregard and Stanhope Elmore.
Holtville wraps up Spring Break with a double header against St. James and two games against LAMP and Ramsay before opening area play against Marbury on Tuesday afternoon.
As of Thursday afternoon, Marbury has a 9-10 record after losing a double header to Wetumpka.
“I think the biggest thing we have to do to turn things around is go back to what we were doing at the beginning of the year,” Tubbs said. “We need to believe in ourselves and start having fun again and do the little things right. Right now, we aren’t having a lot of fun but that’s because of how we’re playing.”
