DACULA — No heroics were needed this time for the Gainesville baseball team.
Two days after getting a dramatic two-run walkoff home run from Collier Scott in the bottom of the seventh for a 3-2 win over Dacula, the Red Elephants scored three runs in the first inning and never looked back in a 10-3 rout of the Falcons Wednesday on the road at Father and Son Field.
The win pushed Gainesville (18-6, 8-3 Region 8-AAAAAA) two games in front of the Falcons (16-9, 6-5) for second place in the region with four games left. The two teams will conclude their three-game series on Friday at Ivey-Watson Field.
Gainesville coach Jeremy Kemp said they aren’t looking at the standings despite having won eight straight in the region since suffering a three-game sweep at the hands of Winder-Barrow last month.
“There’s still too many games left to worry about anything except the next game,” he said. “I feel like we’re playing well right now. But, we still have a lot of work to do to be the kind of team I think we can be.”
The Red Elephants wasted little time in jumping on Falcons’ starter Michael Cherwenka. Banks Griffith drew a leadoff walk, stole second and third and waltzed home for the first run on an errant throw by the catcher trying to gun him down at third. Cameron Wilson and Scott followed with walks and moved to second and third on a double steal. Gainesville swiped five bases in the inning.
After Jared Smith struck out, Charlie Wall walked to load the bases and AJ Smallwood knocked in Wilson with a fielder’s choice. Scott then scored on another throwing error by the Dacula catcher to make it 3-0 but Smallwood was gunned down at third trying to advance on the play.
“I thought we did a good job of capitalizing on some mistakes they made,” Kemp said. “We ran the bases well and wanted to be aggressive. It was nice to get some early runs.”
Smallwood, who started for the Red Elephants, was able to work around a walk and an error in the first inning and the senior righthander retired four of the next five batters he faced. But he ran into trouble in the third.
The Falcons plated a run on three hits but Gainesville catcher Smith gunned down a pair of runners trying to steal third and second baseman Wilson made a diving stop to take away another Dacula hit to get Smallwood out of the inning with just one run scoring.
The Gainesville offense seemed to get energized off that and exploded in the fourth. The Red Elephants loaded the bases on a pair of singles and another Dacula error and Wilson drove in two runs with a double to right and Scott followed with a two-run single. Scott scored on the second Dacula error of the inning for an 8-1 lead.
“We got some big hits and that was good to see,” Kemp said. “Hopefully we can keep some of that momentum going the rest of the way.”
Smallwood finally settled into a groove retiring 10 of the final 13 batters he faced. The Gainesville offense, meanwhile, continued its onslaught picking up two more runs in the sixth on a bases loaded walk to Wall and a RBI sacrifice fly by Smallwood to push the advantage to 10-1.
Adam Benefield came on to pitch the seventh for the Red Elephants and gave up two runs on three hits, but only one of the runs was earned, to close out the game.
The top of the Gainesville lineup was unstoppable. Griffith, Wilson, and Scott combined to go 5-for-10 with four RBI and scored eight runs.
