Complete games on the baseball diamond on March are even rarer than 75-degree days.<\/p>\n
Scott County basked in both uncommon joys of the early season Monday, riding Brady Crace\u2019s three-hit, one-walk, 94-pitch gem to a 3-0 home shutout of George Rogers Clark.<\/p>\n
It was the Cardinals\u2019 seventh win in their first eight games \u2014 a start unseen since 2017 \u2014 and the fifth time they have allowed two or fewer runs.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy fastball and change-up were really working for me,\u201d Crace said of his first varsity victory. \u201cBeing able to hit that outside corner really helped a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crace retired the final eight batters for George Rogers Clark (2-4) and took care of business in 90 minutes.<\/p>\n
The tidy performance lowered his ERA to 2.28 and gave SC needed flexibility heading into a 42nd District doubleheader Tuesday and Wednesday, followed by next week\u2019s spring trip to Vero Beach, Florida.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he was way below 100 pitches,\u201d SC coach Scott Willard said. \u201cNow we have six pitchers we can use over the next two days. What he did was really good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scott County supported Crace with two runs in the bottom of the third inning and another in the fifth.<\/p>\n
Sophomore Jacob Skinner made GRC pay for a leadoff walk to Carson Murray and an intentional pass of Duncan Stevens, shooting a two-out line drive into left field to put the Cards on top, 2-0.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was hitting right at .400 going into today and had two hits today,\u201d Willard said of Skinner, one of only two non-seniors in the batting order. \u201cWhen he stays dead up the middle, he\u2019s a really good hitter.\u201d<\/p>\n
GRC\u2019s choice to pitch around Stevens, who hit a home run in each of SC\u2019s previous three games and has four on the season, backfired again two innings later.<\/p>\n
Will Rose singled ahead of the four offerings well out of the strike zone to the slugging catcher.<\/p>\n
Rose and courtesy runner Wyatt Jones then executed a double steal, and Clark\u2019s errant throw to third allowed Rose to score easily.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was talking to their third baseman, and he said, \u2018He had four home runs last week, didn\u2019t he, Coach?\u2019 You don\u2019t get that in the major leagues,\u201d Willard said.<\/p>\n
Crace retired the side in order to start the game, then pitched around a leadoff single by Cole Fithen in the second.<\/p>\n
\u201cWorking first strike is really big,\u201d Crace said. \u201cOnce you get that first strike, you can work from there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tanner Ratliff and Haddon Cecil teamed up with singles for the only other threat with one out in the fifth.<\/p>\n
Harmless floaters to Colt Fields at third base and Murray in center started Crace\u2019s cruise to the finish.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe went out and attacked the strike zone,\u201d Willard said. \u201cIt helped that he worked himself out of some jams so they couldn\u2019t score. That all worked out well for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Georgetown\u2019s Cardinals are now 11-2 against Winchester\u2019s Cardinals over the past 16 seasons.<\/p>\n
SC split with Frederick Douglass in Tuesday and Wednesday\u2019s 42nd District opening series (see related story), and the Cards are still riding high on the early success that had them ranked No. 8 in the state by MaxPreps to start the week.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s the team chemistry. We all work well together. We all really like this group. We think we can go places,\u201d Crace said. \u201cWe\u2019re really confident. We think we can do things in the district.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Complete games on the baseball diamond on March are even rarer than 75-degree days. Scott County basked in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":661398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2288],"tags":[2315,2309,2336,5,2316,2313,2340,2325,2447,2331,2330,2333,2334,19,2310,2328,2304,2318,2308,2319,4,2305,2303,2307,2343,2327,2321,185,2338,2311,2312],"class_list":{"0":"post-661397","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb-postseason","8":"tag-athletic-sports","9":"tag-ball-and-bat-games","10":"tag-ball-games","11":"tag-baseball","12":"tag-baseball-competitions","13":"tag-baseball-playoffs-and-champions","14":"tag-baseball-positions","15":"tag-baseball-teams","16":"tag-batting-baseball","17":"tag-batting-order-baseball","18":"tag-glossary-of-baseball-terms","19":"tag-grass-field-surfaces","20":"tag-lawn-games","21":"tag-major-league-baseball","22":"tag-major-league-baseball-competitions","23":"tag-major-league-baseball-playoffs","24":"tag-major-league-baseball-postseason","25":"tag-major-league-baseball-seasons","26":"tag-major-league-baseball-teams","27":"tag-major-league-baseball-teams-seasons","28":"tag-mlb","29":"tag-mlb-playoffs","30":"tag-mlb-postseason","31":"tag-outdoor-sports","32":"tag-positions-team-sports","33":"tag-seasons-in-american-sport","34":"tag-seasons-in-baseball","35":"tag-sports","36":"tag-team-activities","37":"tag-team-sports","38":"tag-turf-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=661397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/661398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=661397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=661397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=661397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}