Edenton One Win From Ending Wayne's Season

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Season Totals

After winning the opening game of the American Legion playoffs by a double-digit margin, Wayne County Post 11 finds itself on the verge of being ousted and having the shortest season since 1968.

Edenton Post 40 hammered four pitchers for 17 hits and got a seven-inning complete game effort from Andrew Womble. The result was a 15-5 shellacking at Mount Olive College. It was the third time in the past four Edenton victories against Post 11 that the game was stopped due to the mercy rule. Edenton, which swept Wayne by double digit margins at the start of the 2006 playoffs, is 11-7 while Wayne is 10-8.

Taylor Allen will get the call on the mound when the teams meet at Hick Field in Edenton tonight in game four of the best-of-five series. His task: stop or, more realistically, slow down a Post 40 attack that has manhandled his fellow pitchers.

"You cannot pitch from behind, and we cannot defend a walk," Wayne coach Brad Reaves emphasized after the game. "We're getting behind and we're walking too many hitters. In this league, we're facing everybody's two, three and four hitters. It's not like in high school where you can take a batter off. You've got to get ahead early or you can't get them out."

Another area of concern this season has been the low strikeout totals. "We're not going ( to get a lot of strikeouts), so we've got to pitch to contact and hit spots. If we don't do that we're not going to win. If you put it on the white of the plate, they're going to hit it. That team can hit." Wayne pitchers are averaging five strikeouts per nine innings, the lowest in the past 20 years.

Wayne scored in the first and second innings to hold a 2-1 lead. Then came the explosion.

Edenton rocked Wayne starter Josh Frederick for eight hits and seven runs in the third
to take command of the game. Three of the hitters reached after falling behind in the count 1-2. Robert Jacot's two-run double over the head of the left fielder closed the curtain on Frederick's night. His line: 73 pitches, nine hits and two walks over 2 2/3 innings.

Post 11 went down in order in the third, and Edenton padded its lead with an additional three runs in the fourth on four hits and a walk.

Trailing 11-32 Wayne got a run back in each of the next two innings to keeps its comeback hopes alive. Colton Fulghum walked a later scored on an RBI single by Tyler Edwards. Cody Richards was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded.

After another 1-2-3 inning, Edenton rediscovered its offensive mojo in the sixth. Another four hits, including a two-run double down the third base line by Weston Dodson, gave the visitors an eleven-run cushion.

Cambric Moye homered to left to start the Wayne seventh, and Robert Faucette followed him with a double to deep center. Post 11 needed another run to keep the game going but couldn't get it as the next three batters went down.

Reaves is not pessimistic about his team's chances in its first "must-win" of the brief season, and he won't hesitate to pull the plug on a pitcher's outing. "We won't stay with them as long as we did tonight. That was probably my fault. All of a sudden I thought we were going to make a pitch and we didn't. Then the next pitch I thought we were going to make a pitch and we didn't, and it was too late."