"First game - good game. Second game - bad game, pretty simple," said Post 77 head coach Eddie Bagwell.
In the first game of the night, Anthony Bazzani gave a stellar pitching performance. Bazzani held Douglasville to only one hit and one run - a solo home run in the fourth - while striking out seven batters in six innings of work.
Nick Matteen pitched the rest of the way and allowed only hit and one unearned run.
"We were happy with the pitching," Bagwell said. "Anthony [Bazzani] threw extremely well. That's what we wanted from him, and Nick [Matteen] did a good job of coming in and closing it out for us."
Conyers' offense hit the ball well as usual, but a lot of its runs came because of Douglasville errors. In fact, Conyers scored its first run without a single hit. In the bottom of the first inning, Nick Woodward led off with a weak grounder, which should have been an easy out.
Instead the short stop from Post 145 threw the ball clear over the first baseman's head and over the fence resulting in a two-base error. Woodward moved to third on a ground out then scored after another errant throw went high over the third baseman's head.
In the bottom of the second inning, Conyers scored four more runs, two of them unearned. Brandon Crumbley walked then advanced to second on a bad pick off attempt. Beau Thomas then singled to put two men on base before his Alcovy teammate, Ross Roberts, hammered the ball up the middle for a two-RBI double. Woodward followed with another single and Brandon Thomas pushed Roberts home with a ground out RBI. After Cameron Gibson walked, a pop up by Travis Tarleton in shallow left field was misplayed, resulting in another easy score.
In the third inning, with Conyers already leading 5-0, Roberts did what he does best. After Thomas reached first base on a single, Roberts, Alcovy's all-time home run leader, jacked a two-run homer into the parking lot and nearly all the way to Interstate 20, increasing Conyers' lead to 7-0.
Roberts is the newest edition to the Post 77's already power-laced team.
"I was really excited about picking him [Roberts] up," said Bagwell. "He's a true outfielder. He's a pure hitter. He's not just a power hitter - he hits the ball where it's pitched. I like him all ready."
Douglasville finally got on the board in the top of the fourth inning. Bazzani threw his first bad pitch of the night and Dusty Davis made him pay. Davis smacked the ball over the left field fence for the home run, spoiling the shutout.
Conyers tacked on one more run in the fifth with an outfield error from Douglasville followed by an RBI by Thomas. Douglasville managed to scrape out one more unearned run in the sixth to make the final score 8-2.
"We played a good ball game," said Bagwell. "We pitched well, we caught well, and we hit well."
The second game was a whole different story. Bagwell switched things up by starting David Lockwood and closing with Crumbley. Lockwood's success on the mound was hard to gauge. While Lockwood defiantly had the velocity, his control wasn't always there. In one at-bat, he threw two pitches completely behind a batter, but then managed to fight back in the count and strike the batter out. He struck out nine, but also walked four, hit three, and gave up two home runs to the same player. But, the poor run production and errors made by his team didn't help things either.
"I think we pitched the game well. I think David [Lockwood] deserved a better fate than he got," Bagwell said. "We just made too many errors and we left to many men on the bases. I think we left 13 base runners stranded.
"I still think we have; as much talent as anybody, we just need to work on not taking any game lightly. We have to get out of this mindset of we can just show up and win. It's not true. We cannot expect to win ball games if we don't play defense and if we run the bases poorly. That's the bottom line."
