Thursday, July 31, 1997

Strong pitching can't save lackluster offense

By LANCE FLEMING / Abilene Reporter-News

The Abilene Prairie Dogs finally got a well-pitched game Wednesday night. Unfortunately their offense was nowhere to be found.

Abilene's Louis Maberry pitched seven strong innings, but was outdueled by an even better Ray Davis of Tyler in the WildCatters' 2-1 win over the Prairie Dogs in front of 775 fans at Scott Field.

The Prairie Dogs, who saw their losing streak reach five games, were held to six hits by Davis and closer Ron Kitchen, who pitched a clean ninth inning to pick up his third save.

Jason McClure, Jay Andrews and Jason Keith each had two hits apiece to provide all of Abilene's hits. The Prairie Dogs' only run of the game came in the seventh when Andrews blasted a solo home run deep over the wall in right field to cut Tyler's lead to 2-1.

Keith reached second base in the eighth inning on a single and a sacrifice bunt, but Scott Bethea struck out and McClure flew out to right field to end the inning. The Dogs then went in order in the ninth to end the game.

It was an out of the ordinary game for the Dogs, who normally score a lot of runs and then see their pitching staff give up more. But Wednesday night it was the hitters that didn't get the job done.

"That just goes to show you that you can never talk about anybody, because as soon as you do it comes back to haunt you," Abilene manager Barry Jones said. "Everybody's been talking about how poorly our pitchers have performed, but tonight the pitchers kept us in the game and the hitters didn't perform.

"That was just very typical of how our season has gone," he said. "We haven't had pitching, defense and offense working together on a consistent basis all year."

The Prairie Dogs' lack of offense made a hard-luck loser of Maberry, who fell to 4-2 on the season.

However, he pitched well, scattering six hits over seven innings and striking out two WildCatters.

His only two mistakes came in the second and fifth innings when Tyler got its runs.

In the second, Maberry walked Danny DiPace, saw him steal second and then score on a Carlos Perez single. In the fifth, Perez drilled a first-pitch fastball over the wall in right for a solo home run to make it a 2-0 game.

Maberry, however, pitched well from that point.

"Louis has pitched well for me all year," Jones said. "He kept us in the game, and that's all I can ask of the pitchers. He made two mistakes to the same guy, but other than that he pitched a great game."

But it wasn't enough to keep the red-hot WildCatters from winning their eighth straight game.

"Right now Tyler is playing very sound, fundamental baseball," Jones said. "That's something we haven't done all year."