HAMLET — The Hamlet Post 49 baseball team closed its regular-season schedule with a loss to Florence Post 1 on Thursday.
Head coach Chip Gordon said the purpose of the late-season non-conference game, which Hamlet lost 22-3 in six innings, was to help prepare Post 49 for its Area 2 postseason tournament.
“This game was designed to let our guys get some extra at-bats before going into the tournament,” Gordon explained. “Tonight was a work night for us and we got the work that we wanted.
“As we started making changes in the game, guys showed what they could do,” he added. “I thought we played well. The score doesn’t show it, but outside a couple of errors and some calls that maybe go our way, it’s a much closer ball game.”
Hamlet scored two of its runs in the bottom of the third inning, before tacking on its final run in the fourth.
Chandler Orr led off the third with a single to center, one of Hamlet’s five hits, and moved to second on a ground out. Ra’Nik Little followed in the next at-bat with a line drive RBI single to left, scoring Orr.
A ground out by Kole Dutton moved Little to second, and Trace Ricketts delivered with a hard ground ball to right field for an RBI base knock to plate Little.
In the fourth, Ra’Nes Little led off with a double down the left field line and later scored on a David O’Neal ground out to first base.
Ra’Nes’ double was Hamlet’s lone extra-base hit, but Ra’Nik, Ricketts, Dutton and Orr all had a single in the game.
“We had a lot of at-bats against some really good pitching and we barreled the ball hard, just right at people,” Gordon said.
“There were several players who had good approaches at the plate, we hit the ball backside and were able to move some runners over when we had the chance.”
Gordon also used the game to warm up his pitchers for the postseason, sending six different guys to the mound. Ra’Nik Little started the game and went 1.1 innings, followed by Ricketts who tossed 1.2 innings.
Harley Honeycutt and O’Neal each threw 1.0 inning of relief, Antonio Hines added two-thirds of an inning and Dutton closed the game out with one-third of an inning.
“We ran through six pitchers tonight to try and work some bullpens in going into the playoffs,” Gordon said. “Hopefully the guys got in the work they needed so they’ll be dialed in and ready to go in the first game of the series.”
Florence scored four runs in both the first and second innings, added three in the fourth, seven in the fifth and ended the game with four more in the sixth.
Post 49 (3-11) will begin its Area 2 postseason run with a best-of-five series against Wilmington Post 10, starting on the road Sunday, before returning home on Monday.
