Dragons offense stymied by Hebron aces

The season came to an end for the Carroll baseball team on Saturday after the Dragons lost two straight games to Hebron in the area round of the playoffs.

Coach Larry Hughes said that the Hawks have a strong program and said that the biggest problem his team faced was not being able to come up with timely hits when needed.

“We knew it was going to be a tough series,” Hughes said. “We played them last year, and they got just about everybody back, and the two pitchers that we beat last year have really improved, and we just couldn’t score enough runs. We couldn’t put enough together against them.

“They have a really tough lineup, and our pitchers really threw well. We just couldn’t score any runs.”

The Dragons finished district runners up and defeated Mansfield in the bi-district round last week.

Hughes said that while he is satisfied with the season as a whole, expectations are always high at Carroll.

“I’m pretty satisfied,” Hughes said. “We were excited coming into the season, me and the coaching staff, about our lineup, because we thought we were really going to be able to score more runs. We knew that we had good pitching and defense, so we didn’t feel like we were going to give up much.

“That part was true. Our team ERA was about 1.50 for the season, but we just couldn’t seem to get enough big hits this year to get the RBIs and runs we needed. Having said that, we played 30 games and won 21 of them. So we’ve played consistent baseball.”

Hughes said that the good news for his team is that things are shaping up well for next season.

“We have a pretty good nucleus returning with a pitcher and catcher,” Hughes said. “We’ve got (Kole) Ramage and (Ross) Cadena coming back. And then we’ve got Jake Murphy, who will probably move from center field to shortstop. He is a very good infielder and good overall player. We’re going to graduate a lot of seniors, but we have a good nucleus returning and have good JV players that are moving up. So we should be in good shape for next year.”

This story was originally published May 17, 2016 at 6:41 PM with the headline "Dragons offense stymied by Hebron aces."