Jemison playoff hopes shatter

Published 1:35 pm Monday, April 10, 2017

By Brandon Sumrall | Special to the Advertiser
The Jemison Panthers varsity baseball team suffered what will be a season-ending defeat on Friday night with an 11-0 loss at home to the Marbury Bulldogs.

The Bulldogs jumped out to an early 2-0 lead in the top of the first with an RBI double and an RBI ground ball that put Jemison in an early two-run deficit.

A leadoff single by Will Johns and a two-out walk to Chase Deason did nothing to help the Panthers in the home half of the inning, as action moved to the top of the second.

The second inning came and went with no change in the score, before Marbury tacked on two more runs in the top half of the third.

A walk and a pair of errors plated two Bulldogs in the top of the third inning while the Panthers found no answer in the home half of the inning even after a pair of Marbury errors, single by Deason and a fielder’s choice single by Austin Chapman.

A leadoff single by Seth Dobbs to start the fourth set up a sacrifice fly to score another Marbury run and with no help after a one-out single by Camden Phillips in the bottom half of the inning, the game moved to the fifth with Jemison trailing 5-0.

Marbury tacked on three more in the top of the fifth thanks to two sacrifice flies and a Panthers’ error, but Jemison continued to have issues at the plate as an inning-ending strikeout stranded two Panther base runners and saw the deficit grow to eight.

Both teams went in order through the sixth, as action moved to the seventh where the Bulldogs tacked on three more.

The game went to the bottom of the seventh with Jemison trailing 11-0.

A pair of strikeouts and a fly ball to right brought the inning and the game to a close while sealing the playoff fate of the Panthers for the season.

Johns, Deason and Phillips each picked up a single for the Panthers at the plate, while Chapman handled the pitching and threw seven innings. He allowed four earned runs with three walks, seven hits and two strikeouts.