Red Bay baseball reaches semifinals

The Red Bay Tigers (21-7) beat the Whitesburg Christian Warriors in two out of three games to advance to the semifinals of the Class 2A baseball playoffs. The Tigers will face a familiar opponent-their area rival Mars Hill (24-10) on Thursday.

The Tigers lost to the Warriors in the opening game of the series 2-0 but battled back to win game two 3-0 and game three 8-2 to take the series.

After tying the series 1-1, Red Bay left no doubt in game three, opening up an 8-0 lead after five and half innings. Whitesburg Christian scored a run each in the bottom of the fifth and sixth innings, but that was all they could muster against Tiger pitcher Aiden Pruit. Pruitt pitched four shutout innings before giving up the two runs and only allowed four hits.

At the plate Pruitt got the job done as well, hitting a solo home run in the top of the fifth inning.

The Tigers scored their eight runs on six hits by six different batters – Pruitt, Ty Reynolds, Carson McGee, Hunter Strickland, Eli Farris and Landon Lewey.

Reynolds and Pruitt both had two RBI. Farris scored two runs.

In game two, Reynolds had a dominating performance on the mound. He pitched six and a third shutout innings, giving up one hit and striking out eight.

Red Bay scored their first run in the bottom of the first inning when Reynolds helped himself on an RBI-single scoring Jeramiah Thorne.

The Tigers added two more runs in the bottom of the third.