McCracken County baseball celebrated senior night with an 8-0 win over St. Mary, where lockdown pitching from Josh Penrod and Grant Vinyard held St. Mary to just a lone hit, and a few Mustang batters strung together timely hits to help come away with the win.
“This group of seniors, it’s honestly hard for me to talk about this group. They’re special,” McCracken head coach Zach Hobbs said. “It’s the best and worst part of coaching, you get to see these guys grow up and just become outstanding young men, then you see them graduate. You’re excited for them, you’re happy for them to go to their next steps. But man, you miss them because they’re so fun, so special. This group has meant a lot to me, and I hope they know that.”
Grant Vinyard did it all in this matchup, pitching the final six innings for the Mustangs, allowing just one hit while walking three and striking out nine. On the offensive side, he went 2-3 at the dish and tallied three RBI, a pair stemming from a single into center field during the third frame.
“When Grant’s on, he’s as good as anybody in the region,” Hobbs said. “He’s going to have a great career at Wabash. He had stuff working, fastball working, breaking ball working, came in behind Penrod and did a great job. He also had two hits. Grant threw the crap out of it today. He had nine strikeouts and gave up one hit, and that was my fault because I said to our other coaches, ‘has he given up any hits?’ and about that time he gave up a hit, so I’ll tell him later that’s on me.”
McCracken scored all of their runs in the third and fourth innings. Kendrick Dunning drove in three runs as well off a sacrifice fly and a single to plate a pair. Owen McGee finished with a team-high three hits, coming around to score twice.
This marked the 20th win for the Mustangs on the season, who now sit at 20-7 so far. They have the district locked up as the number one seed already, so they focus now to gearing up for the postseason. They face a trio of quality opponents this weekend in South Oldham, Trinity, and DuPont Manual, a weekend that will test their depth and conditioning.
“We just want to compete. From here out, these are scrimmage games to get ready for the postseason. They asked me on the radio about playing Trinity, and I said we play two pretty good teams before we play Trinity. So right now we’re going to worry about South Oldham tomorrow, then we got DuPont Manual and Trinity on Saturday. We’ll go and compete, get better, and prepare ourselves for the postseason one way or another.”
St. Mary falls to 15-5, and will take on Community Christian Academy on the road Friday before facing Murray, Marshall, and Carlisle next week.
MCCRACKEN COUNTY 8, ST. MARY 0
STM 0 0 0 0 0 0 0- 0 1 1
MCC 0 0 3 5 0 0x- 8 10 1
WP: G Vinyard ; LP: J Haas
2B: C Kern, O McGee
TB: MCC- O McGee 4, C Kern 3, G Vinyard 2, B Hall 1, G Dugan 1, K Dunning 1; STM- C Simmons 1
HBP: G Vinyard, K Dunning
SF: H Neely, K Dunning
SB: W Buckhalter 3, C Kern, K Dunning, L Grace