Signal Mountain came into Tuesday's District 6-AA high school baseball game against Red Bank needing a victory to keep pace with Hixson atop the league standings. And thanks to the efforts of a freshman right-handed pitcher and an opportunistic offense, the Eagles were able to get it done.
Sam Witherspoon allowed three hits in his five innings of work, and a four-run fourth inning coupled with a six-run sixth enabled host Signal Mountain to defeat the Lions 12-2 in six innings.
Signal Mountain (13-11) improved to 9-2 in the district while Red Bank (10-10) fell to 7-4. The teams play again today at Red Bank at 6:30 in a game originally scheduled Monday but was not played because of bad weather.
"It was a big game," Signal Mountain coach Josh Gandy said of Tuesday's victory. "One thing is we kind of control our destiny. We could win and finish in first place because we have the tiebreaker over Hixson, or we could fall all the way back to three. That was a big win."
Red Bank scored an unearned run without benefit of a hit in the third inning. The Lions added another in the fifth when Murphy Emery doubled, Jacob Landers singled and Eli Massengale picked up an RBI by hitting into a force play.
But that's all the Lions could muster, even though they left a runner on third base in each of the first four innings. They stranded three in the first and left two in scoring position in the fourth.
"We just couldn't get any hits going," Red Bank coach Jason Henderson said. "We had guys on base. But every time it seemed like they'd get two outs on us, we were unable to come through."
Witherspoon walked four and struck out five.
"My freshman didn't have his best stuff," Gandy said, "but he just kind of went out there and gutted out five innings."
The Eagles led 2-1 before their key fourth-inning rally, which started with Collins Poole's double. An out later Mark Jones singled him in, and then with two outs Drew Lowry hit a run-scoring single followed by Collin Farr's two-RBI single.
Consecutive singles, the last a bunt by Landon Edwards, loaded the bases with none out to start Signal Mountain's sixth. Lions starter Izak Sullivan was relieved at that point.
"He's a good left-handed pitcher," Gandy said of Sullivan. "He'll pitch you away, away, away, then throw a really good curveball that breaks toward your back foot. We made some good adjustments at the plate, and it kind of worked out for us."
Farr added another two-run single threw a drawn-in infield in that inning, which included three of Red Bank's four errors.
"Not our best outing defensively," Henderson said. "If Izak is going to pitch, the defense is going to be involved. We usually have his back. Today we didn't make the plays behind our pitchers."
Lowry and Edwards each went 2-for-3 with Lowry driving in two runs and scoring twice. Edwards had an RBI triple and scored three times. Farr was joined at 2-for-4 by Jones and Scott Payne, who each scored twice.
Massengale drove in both of the Lions' runs.
Contact Kelley Smiddie at ksmiddie@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6653. Follow him on Twitter @KelleySmiddie.