KEYSTONE HEIGHTS – Keystone Heights baseball coach Alan Mattox cited pitcher Connor O’Steen as stellar for his five strikeout performance in Friday night’s 12-1 pounding of P.K. Yonge in a key …
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KEYSTONE HEIGHTS – Keystone Heights baseball coach Alan Mattox cited pitcher Connor O’Steen as stellar for his five strikeout performance in Friday night’s 12-1 pounding of P.K. Yonge in a key district 5-5A match at Keystone Heights High School, but Mattox could very easily have praised his lively batting lineup for the crushing five-inning win.
“It starts on the mound. Connor was fantastic. He had all three pitches working and then obviously we have to play good defense” said Mattox. “We did that tonight and everything else just kind of fell in place tonight.”
Offensively, the Indians cleared the house and put up 12 runs to crash the Blue Wave early with a stellar 12-1 home win in front of a packed Friday night home crowd.
Keystone Heights, the defending district 5-5A champions over the same P.K. Yonge team that was shellshocked Friday night, sits in the middle of a won/loss traffic jam of teams led by Santa Fe, 11-11 overall but 8-4 in district play with the Indians, P.K.Yonge, Newberry and Fort White all with 6-6 district slates, fighting for the number two slot. The Indians finish regular season play with Ridgeview (April 24), Clay (April 25) and Buchholz (April 26).
“Everybody in our district beat up on each other,” said Mattox. “Santa Fe kind of separated themselves a little later in the deal here, so, the seating is just going to determine who you’re going to play. If we go out and throw strikes, play good defense, and have quality at bats, we got a chance.”
In the second inning, down 1-0, the Blue Wave knew they were in trouble as they finally got a runner on with a single, only to have the first of two double plays thrown to kill any momentum they started to build.
In the bottom of the second, the Indian’s Trey Alsabrook hooked up a center field line drive single, followed up by a Kaison Harvey walk for runners at first and second. Will Yeldell moved his runners with a sacrifice to set the scoring stage. Enter Cole Mattox who listened to the call for low shots and placed the ball perfectly with a right field two-RBI grounder, scoring Alsabrook and Harvey, 3-0 Keystone Heights.
Keystone Heights would increase their lead to 4-1 on an Alex Kanos single and a two-RBI single from Osteen that pushed the Indians lead to 6-1.
With two outs, Tyler Noble scored off two wild pitchers to push the lead to 7-1. A third wild pitch scored Nate Gagnon to leave the inning at 8-1.
Three singles in the fifth; Yeldell, Cole Mattox and Kanos scored the game 9-1 with an error on an O’Steen grounder adding one more, 10-1. A two run double from Andrew Cox finished out the Indian scoring blitz at 12-1.