Extra batting practice pays off for Blue Devils in victory over Granite City

QUINCY — The members of the Quincy High School baseball team did not want the frustration of Wednesday’s 3-0 loss to Moline to linger any longer than necessary.

So, the Blue Devils arrived to the ballpark at 1:45 Thursday afternoon — a half hour earlier than normal — to get in extra batting practice ahead of their game against Granite City.

“We wanted to get out here and get as many swings in as we could before the game and put in our best effort,” Blue Devils designated hitter Drake Gibson said. “It definitely paid off in the game.”

That extra work paid off in the form of 11 hits and seven unanswered runs in a 7-3 victory over the Warriors.

Gibson felt like the Blue Devils could have more than doubled that run total.

“We should have run-ruled them, for sure,” Gibson said. “I think we could have scored like 15 today.”

The Blue Devils faced an all too familiar 3-0 deficit after the top of the second. After that, the struggles with runners on base that plagued them on Wednesday turned into timely hits on Thursday.

With two outs in the bottom of the second, Cameron Lawson legged out an infield single to allow Gavin Fink to score the Blue Devils’ first run in 9 ⅔ innings dating back to their 11-1 loss to Moline on Monday. Gibson then laced a single through the right side to score Lawson and Kade Parkhill and tie the game.

“Fortunately for us, it seems like (Gibson) comes up in those situations a lot, and credit to our guys in front of him for getting him in that situation. There’s nobody else I’d rather have up with guys on base and a chance to knock some in than Drake,” Blue Devils coach Rick Lawson said. “He’s seeing it well, hitting it hard.”

Gibson believed the game could have gone a different direction had the Blue Devils not scored in that inning.

“It might have taken away all of our energy, and we might have lost that game,” Gibson said.

Instead, the Blue Devils parlayed the momentum they captured during that inning into three more runs after five straight singles to begin the third. Trace Routh gave the Blue Devils a 4-3 lead with a bunt single, then James Day and Jacob Salisbury followed with run-scoring base hits.

Quincy added another run in the fifth on the heels of three consecutive scoreless innings by Day. Noah Wells then blanked the Warriors in the final two frames, leading to a much more satisfactory result than the Blue Devils had 24 hours prior.

“That (second) inning is really what got us going,” said Blue Devils second baseman Kade Parkhill, who went 2 for 4 and scored two runs. “We built off of it, and we kept it pretty consistent from there. If we don’t produce there, who knows how the game ends up?”

After an 0-for-8 effort with runners in scoring position on Wednesday, the Blue Devils went 6 for 16 with runners in scoring position on Thursday, including a 6 for 6 stretch in the second and third innings.

“I still feel like there were plenty of opportunities,” Rick Lawson said. “Like I told them, I feel like we could have had 14, 15 today pretty easily as many guys as we had on, but I still like the at-bats. We maybe even hit the ball better yesterday still, but we were able to find the holes today, and that’s what’s important.”

Sometimes the baseball gods are gracious.

“Fortunately with baseball, you get another chance early,” Rick Lawson said. “It’s not like football where you have to wait a week. We can get right back out and play the next day. Luckily, things went our way today.”

The Blue Devils (7-12) have the weekend off before a Western Big 6 Conference matchup with United Township at home on Monday.