By Marshall Tempest
Reporter
The Apopka baseball team returned from spring break in a big way Tuesday night, rolling to a 14-0 win over the East River Falcons, followed by a 6-3 win over St. Cloud a day later.
Apopka vs. East River (14-0) Win
Tyler Spaid led the way on the mount, tossing a two-hit, complete-game shutout. He struck out nine and walked one while throwing 66 of 99 pitches for strikes over seven innings of work.
At the plate, Jez Hamrick led the offensive outburst, collecting a pair of hits and driving in four runs.
The game started slowly, as Apopka wasted a leadoff double from Aiden Rieli in the first inning and the teams entered the fourth in a scoreless tie.
After two walks started the inning, Collin VanFleet walked to the plate with two outs and runners on second and third. VanFleet delivered a two-run single to put the Blue Darters on top 2-0. A strikeout ended the top of the fourth, but Spaid made quick work of East River to get the Darters back up to the plate to start the fifth.
East River sent in a new pitcher, and Apopka promptly broke the game open. A single and two walks loaded the bases with one out for Wyatt Jaggers. He drew a walk to push across an insurance run, leading to another East River pitching change. Hamrick greeted him by smashing a line drive double to left that cleared the bases and stretched the lead to 6-0.
“When he hit the double to knock the runs in, that didn’t surprise me,” Brewer said. “He’ll usually give you a good at-bat almost every time, especially when guys are in scoring position.”
After a quiet sixth inning, Apopka poured on eight more runs in the seventh. The Blue Darters collected four walks, three singles and one double to send in those eight runs in the top of the seventh, with several runs scoring on wild pitches.
Brewer told me Spaid’s pitching performance in this win was the best he had seen all year. He said Spaid hasn’t looked his usual self on the mound recently and spent some time over spring break with the Blue Darters’ pitching coach Steve Stowell.
“He was very good,” Brewer said. “He battles anytime he’s on the mound. But last night, you saw a fastball with a little bit more on it than he had been having, he was in total command of his breaking ball, and his changeup was good. So, he had all this stuff working last night.”
Brewer attributed the power surge at the plate to taking a break and focusing on their game during spring break.
“Before the break, they were just—they were thinking too much,” he said. ‘I think they were trying too hard. I think the break brought everybody back down to where we needed to be, which is just relax, have fun with it, and do the things that you know you can do.”
Leading the Darters at the plate in this win were Hamrick, Rieli, Nico Posluszny and VanFleet. Hamrick went 2-for-4 with the three-run double and an RBI single. Rieli went 3-for-5 at the plate, collecting two runs and two doubles. Posluszny went 1-for-2 at the plate with an RBI single and three runs scored. VanFleet went 2-for-4 at the plate and collected a two-RBI single. Apopka also stole three bases and drew nine walks.
In the field, Apopka was perfect once again with a 1.000 fielding percentage with 21 putouts on 21 total chances while also collecting two double plays, one coming from Hamrick and one from Spaid.
“We’re a good team,” Brewer said. “We’re a really good team, and we’re tough to beat. When the pitching is good, the defense is good, and we’re putting the balls in play and making them make difficult plays, we are a great team. The strikeouts and the pop-ups – if we eliminate those things and play our game, we’ll be fine.”
Apopka vs. St. Cloud (6-3) Win
Apopka enjoyed their very first home game of the season at J. Barnes Field on Tuesday. The Blue Darters defeated the St. Cloud Bulldogs 6-3, using a four-run second inning to break open the game.
The four-run rally all came with two outs. Reef VanKuren stepped to the plate with runners on first and second and singled on a line drive to send in Apopka’s first run. Rieli then slapped a grounder through the infield to send in the second run. Apopka’s next two runs came in courtesy of Ty Livingston, who doubled to left field to score two more runs and put the Blue Darters up 4-0 going to the third.
“We have actually done that two or three times this year,” Brewer said. “I’m not saying that we’ve got .300 hitters all up and down our lineup, but I will say that we have guys up and down our lineup that give you good at-bats. So even with two outs, the next guy up, even if we get to the bottom of our order, there’s still guys that will give you a quality at-bat.”
St. Cloud scored three runs in the fourth to pull within a run, but Apopka tacked on single runs in the fourth and sixth innings to seal the 6-3 win.
Livingston, Rieli and Andy Diaz paced the Apopka offense. Livingston went 2-for-4 at the plate with two RBIs and a double. Rieli went 3-for-4 with one run and one RBI. Diaz went 1-for-2 and scored twice.
Jaggers pitched a complete game for the Blue Darters on the mound. He allowed seven hits and three runs (one earned) while striking out five. Jaggers ended the game with a 1.00 ERA after throwing 88 pitches.
What’s next
After the win over East River and St. Cloud, Apopka had two more games this week. On Thursday, they traveled to East Ridge to face off against the Knights. On Friday, March 28, Apopka will host the Wekiva Mustangs for a game beginning at 6 p.m. After this week, the team has just six games until the end of the regular season.
The two wins improve the Blue Darters to 10-6 on the season, including 1-1 in district play, and ranked 181st in the state according to MaxPreps on Wednesday, March 26.
The Blue Darters are 4-2 in their last six games, overcoming East River (8-1), The Villages (6-2), East River again (14-0) and St. Cloud (6-3), while falling to Dr. Phillips (5-4) and Lake Nona (11-9). Apopka has scored 88 runs and allowed 51 for a positive 37-run scoring differential.
