Phillips tosses 2nd straight shutout; Cougars 2nd at halfway point

Phillips tosses 2nd straight shutout; Cougars 2nd at halfway point
For the 2nd straight time and 3rd time this season, the Barton County Community College baseball team rode the pitching efforts of Ryan Phillips and Derek McDaid to a doubleheader sweep. This time the Cougars defeated Garden City 4-0 and 7-2 to improve to 10-6 in the Jayhawk West, good for 2nd place. Barton is now 22-14 overall. Garden City fell to 5-9 and 19-12. The Cougars will play at Cloud County Saturday then host West leading and West unbeaten Seward County in a doubleheader Sunday at 1 p.m.

Highlights
Phillips was nearly unhittable in the opener in pitching the 2-hit, 11 strikeout gem. Phillips didn't give up his 1st hit until the 5th inning and allowed the 2nd hit in the 7th and final inning. Phillips issued his only walk in the 1st inning and struck out 5 batters in a row at one point. The only time he had to pitch out of a jam was the 4th inning when the Cougars defense made a couple of errors behind him, putting runners 1st and 2nd with 1 out. But Phillips struck out the next batter and got a ground out to end the inning and preserve his 2nd straight shutout. Last time out he and McDaid both tossed shutouts in a 5-0, 3-0 sweep of Butler.

The Cougars scored all the runs that Phillips would need in the opening inning when they put 3 on the board. Andrew Giambrone started it with a leadoff double, scoring on a 1-out Wes Renfro double. Cook singled in Renfro and later scored on a triple by Steve Edlefsen. Steve Elson also had a triple it the when the Cougars scored in the 5th. Elson tripled and later scored on a Renfro sacrifice fly. Phillips improved to 6-1 with the win and now has 67 strikeouts to just 15 walks in 43 innings of work. Opponents are hitting just .158 against he big left-hander.

It looked like the Cougars may turn the double shutout trick again with Phillips and McDaid but Garden City finally broke through and scored against the Cougars in the 5th inning of the 2nd game. By then Barton had put up a 7-0 lead on the Broncbusters. McDaid went the distance for the win to improve to 5-3 for the year.

The Cougars took a 1-0 lead in the 2nd when Harrison Harber's sacrifice fly scored Jeff Christy, who had started the inning off with a walk. Barton made it 3-0 in the 3rd as Giambrone tripled with one out and scored on a single by Elson. Elson then scored on a double by Christy. Barton blew the game open in the 4th with 4 more runs for the 7-0 lead. The big blow in the inning was a triple by Blake Esfeld that scored Harber and Edlefsen. Elson then singled in Esfeld and scored the easy way. Elson went to 2nd on a passed ball, moved to 3rd on a balk and scored on a wild pitch.

Stats
Stats can be found at the Barton County Website at www.bartonccc.edu/sports

Next
Sat., April 17 – at Cloud County, 1 pm (West doubleheader at Concordia)
Sun., April 18 – vs Seward County, 1 pm (West doubleheader at Cougar Fields)