By Brad Morris
SportingPumpkin.com
ASHVILLE — Staked to an early 2-0 lead, Teays Valley senior pitcher Matt Farmer was nearly flawless in maintaining the advantage on Wednesday in a Mid-State League Buckeye Division win over visiting Logan Elm.
Farmer faced one batter over the minimum, yielding a single to center by Logan Elm’s Carson Summers in the fifth inning, and struck out 10 batters. The Teays Valley right-hander threw just 73 pitches, 61 of which were strikes, and he started all but five batters with a first-pitch strike in earning his sixth win of the season.
“Having Matt lead our staff is a tremendous luxury, especially with how he’s started the season. Matt is in some kind of zone,” Teays Valley coach Mark Colburn said. “Matt had great control of all three of his pitches, starting with his changeup the first time through and then using his breaking ball and then his fastball.
“(Assistant coach Chris Wooten) called a nice game and he is doing a good job of working with our pitchers.”
Hayden Wells led off the home first with a single to center and advanced to third when Jeremiah Fabbro laid down a sacrifice bunt that was thrown away.
Landon Vandegrift followed with a sacrifice fly to knock in Wells and Ivan Smith lined a 3-2 pitch to center for an RBI single that scored Fabbro.
“We’ve moved Hayden to leadoff, because he has a good bat and always seems to find the barrel,” Colburn said. “He did a nice job of getting us started, Jeremiah put down a nice bunt that we were fortunate Logan Elm threw away and then Landon and Ivan both did their jobs.”
The Vikings had just three hits the rest of the way against Logan Elm pitcher Colton Eplin.
“We need to do a better job of making adjustments and looking for our pitch to hit,” Colburn said. “We didn’t have a lot of quality at-bats tonight and we depended on Matt to just flat out work on the mound, which he did, but it would be easier on Matt if we gave him a little more of a lead to work with.”
Eplin allowed five hits and two runs (one earned) over six innings. He walked a pair of batters and struck out five.
The performance was a vast improvement for the Braves after the Vikings run-ruled them 16-0 in the opening week of the season.
“Eplin limited the damage we did in the first and you could tell he continued to gain confidence throughout the game and was having fun on the mound,” Colburn said. “(Logan Elm coach Terry Holbert) has done a phenomenal job with their young team. They have been playing better baseball and are really battling teams.”
Both teams continue league play on Thursday, as the Vikings (8-3, 5-1) travel to Amanda-Clearcreek and the Braves (3-11, 2-5) host Circleville.
Teays Valley 2, Logan Elm 0
Logan Elm 000 000 0— 0 1 1
Teays Valley 200 000 x—2 5 0
Eplin and Summers; Farmer and McFarland
(740) 477-1661
