Rockdale’s first district victory of the season was Zac Davis’ first win of the season and both fall into the better late than never category.
The Tigers finally picked up their first District 20-3A win of the season after 10 games with a 3-1 victory over Rogers Friday at Tiger Field.
With a 16-8 loss to Jarrell Tuesday, Rockdale ends the season at 5-14 overall and 1-11 in league play.
The Tigers coaxed a masterful pitching performance from Davis as the big righthander carried a no-hitter into the fifth inning.
“Honestly, he just threw strikes and made them swing the bat,” said Rock-dale Coach Jacob McMurtry. “He did a good job of establishing his fastball down in the strike zone, then mixed in the off-speed pitches when necessary just to keep them off balance.
“You can go back and look at some of our past games, we were never really out hit by a large margin, we just gave up hits after we let guys on by walks. Zac gave us a chance to win Friday night simply by keeping the ball in the strike zone and staying in the game as long as he could.”
Davis logged his first victory of the season against three losses, striking out a career-high nine batters in the process.
The 6-foot-3 junior was lifted with two outs in the sixth inning for Jackson Perry after allowing just his second hit. Davis surrendered just two hits, both singles. He allowed four walks.
Davis worked out of trouble in the fifth when a single and two walks loaded the bases for Rogers, but he struck out Nolan Wolf to end the inning and preserve the shutout.
Perry—in his first appearance on the mound in 2018—allowed a run in the seventh after a throwing error and with the tying runs on base, the Tigers pulled off a game ending double play when Ryker Zinn chased down a fly ball in centerfield and then fired the ball to second base to catch pinch hitter Jimmy Prado off base to end the game.
Davis was also instrumental in aiding his own cause at the plate by producing two of the Tigers’ three runs with an RBI single in the first and a ground out RBI in the sixth.
Perry reached on an error in the first and Davis drove him home and he brought in Perry again who had doubled, with a ground out to second base in the sixth to make it 3-0.
Brandon Hernandez accounted for the second Rockdale run with a run scoring single (his first RBI of the season) that plated Josh Springer who had been hit by a pitch. In his last five at-bats, Springer has been hit by a pitch four times—twice against Rogers.
Rockdale made the best of just five hits against Rogers hurler Trevor Glaser, including two doubles.
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