Asa Blake picked up his first varsity baseball pitching victory Thursday with a one-hitter against Central in Cleveland's 12-0 opening-round victory in the Ooltewah Invitational.
There is an ulterior motive for the sophomore who'll turn 16 on April 21. He is pitching with an eye on earning his first car.
His father, Milan Blake, a Bradley County commissioner, offered a deal that was quickly accepted.
"I have to get 40 strikeouts," Asa said.
Forty strikeouts by season's end will earn him a car along with insurance. But there is a catch: A strikeout is plus-one toward the 40, while issuing a walk is minus-one.
Depending on who's counting, the 6-foot-2 right-hander is a fourth of the way there, but young Blake wasn't so worried about strikeouts Thursday. While he struck out three and walked none, he was certain a hit batsman would go against him.
"Oh, yeah," he said with a laugh. "With my dad? Yep, that'll count against me."
If efficiency enters the equation, though, he might have talked his way into bonus points by this morning.
Efficient doesn't do his performance justice. He threw just 59 pitches in six innings and was stretched to a full count only once in his second start of 2017 and his fourth appearance this year for the Blue Raiders.
"You can't ask for a better outing - less than 10 pitches per inning," Cleveland coach Preston Scoggins said. "You talk about efficiency and pounding the strike zone, all the things we ask of our pitchers he executed in giving us a great quality start. Obviously he has big things ahead of him, and I'm excited about having him in the future."
Scoggins also had to be excited with the season-high 12-run offensive output, which he said might have doubled the Blue Raiders' season production going into the game.
"I was proud of how we kept our foot on the gas pedal and kept finding ways to reach the next base," he said. "I'm excited. With our start this is a good one to get under our belt and boost some confidence and get some guys moving ahead on positive vibes."
Bryce Witt was 3-for-3, Camden Sewell was 2-for-2 with a double and three RBIs and Dylan Turner and Jake Griffin also had three-hit showings.
Central's highlights belonged to catcher Kolby Hinshaw. He had the Purple Pounders' lone hit and also nailed a pair of wouldbe base thieves.
"His throwdowns in warm-ups were short hops and long hops. We put a hit-and-run on; we didn't swing and he hosed our guy," Scoggins said. "Then our guy hits a screaming line drive. We decide to go on the first pitch and he hosed him out, too. After that I decided to definitely check back a little bit (on base-stealing)."
Contact Ward Gossett at wgossett@timesfreepress.com or 423-886-4765. Follow him at Twitter.com/wardgossett.