Apollo baseball has leaned on pitching so far this season
Apr. 28—Apollo High School had found some good combinations on the pitcher's mound over the last couple of weeks.
The Eagles had won five games in a row before losing a 1-0 heartbreaker to Owensboro on a runner scoring on a wild pitch with the bases loaded Tuesday night.
Cayden Ray struck out 11 for OHS, and Apollo's Noah Cook struck out nine.
"Both pitchers were electric," Apollo coach Brandon Dennis said. "Cayden Ray and Noah were really good, we just came out on the short end."
Usually a loss like that would have taken a couple of days to get over for a team, but with the schedule rolling like it has the last week or two, it was on to the next game. That was another 9th District matchup with Owensboro Catholic that was scheduled for Thursday but was rained out.
Apollo has the best record in the 3rd Region at the moment at 16-7, 2-2 in the 9th District. Catholic is 15-7, 3-1 in the district.
"We couldn't afford to give that time away, normally it would've taken some time, but now every day is important this time of year, because we're just over two weeks away from the district tournament," Dennis said.
"Our pitching has been unbelievable, we knew it would be a strength. Those guys have not only accepted the challenge, but they've carried us through a lot of games, they've kept us in position to be in games, to win games we wouldn't have won otherwise."
Cook has a 3.54 ERA and 55 strikeouts in 31.2 innings. Will Strode has a 3.04 ERA with 28 strikeouts in 23 innings. Braxton Franey recently threw Apollo's first complete game of the year. Grayson Smith and Carter Kimmel are two sophomores who have also pitched well.
"I wish we could get those three guys more innings," Dennis said. "The more seasoned we can get the three-four-five guys, we feel like the better we're going to be."
Defense has done well supporting the pitching, but the pitching staff has had to do a lot of work while Apollo has tried to figure out ways to score more runs.
"We expected to be scoring more runs than we've been scoring, but we've done what we needed to do to win, we'd like to get to the point where we can give our pitchers more wiggle room," Dennis said.
Strode has been batting .394 with 22 RBIs to lead Apollo. Easton Blandford is hitting .381.
If there's been a surprise for Apollo so far, it's been senior Hayden Cash, who has pitched some and played in spots at the corner infield positions. Cash is a senior who didn't play last season.
"When he's been given the opportunity, Hayden has jumped all over it," Dennis said. "He has been the most consistent hitter we have day in and day out. Once we could get him some at-bats he ran with it."
