POTOMAC PARK — The Potomac Valley Mudcats led from the start and cruised to a 14-2, five-inning win over Fort Cumberland Post 13 in a one-off exhibition on Friday at Memorial Field.
The Mudcats (4-0) are part of the Fayette County Baseball League consisting of five teams from Pennsylvania and the Oakland Oaks of Garrett County.
“The biggest difference is we got a lot of college kids,” Mudcats manager Matt Healy said of the contrast to American Legion baseball. “Legion’s still got a lot of kids just graduating or underclassmen.”
Due to several players being unavailable, Potomac Valley used two coaches to field Friday’s lineup.
The other eight players are all playing in college with five in junior college and three playing Division II.
The opportunity to see college level competition was a key reason Post 13 agreed to schedule the game.
“We scheduled to go up to Morgantown for a big tournament, unfortunately, we can’t go,” Post 13 manager Brian McAlpine said. “That was big-time tournament last year. One of the players actually signed in college after that tournament because he had such a big tournament. Just to get a competitive nature of what they’re gonna see, just about the whole team that’s their goal.”
The Mudcats scored seven runs in the top of the first off doubles from Reilly Bubb (Potomac State), Tyson Shumaker (Salem/Mountain Ridge) and Noah Broadwater (Garrett College/Keyser) and singles by Conner Blake (Garrett College) and Frank Blake.
“The score didn’t indicate what we wanted to do,” coach McAlpine said. “It’s been close to three weeks since we’ve played. Fortunate enough, my son (Landon) plays over there, so fortunate to get a team that wants to come down and play us.”
Potomac Valley added a pair of runs in the second before scoring five in the third to conclude its scoring.
Landon McAlpine (Salem/Mountain Ridge) and JJ Charlton (Garrett College/Hampshire) singled and Logan Rotruck (Potomac State/Keyser) doubled to drive in the Mudcats runs in the third.
Kohen Madden (Allegany) was responsible for both of Post 13’s runs.
He lined into a double play in the first that scored a run before hitting a double over the center fielder’s head in the third.
“I thought we did real well,” coach McAlpine said. “We didn’t have a lot of flyouts, we didn’t have a lot of strikeouts either. The ground was soggy, so a lot of those balls up the middle were double plays, Tuesday’s they’re gonna shoot through.”
Blake earned the win in four innings, allowing two earned runs on five hits and three walks with a pair of strikeouts.
Broadwater, McAlpine, Charlton and Frank Blake each had two hits for Potomac Valley.
Cole Ricker (Allegany) and Madden added a pair of hits for Fort Cumberland.
The Mudcats host the Oaks on Saturday at Garrett College at 4:30 p.m.
“Weather’s been rough, we’ve had a lot of games cancelled,” Healy said. “We haven’t played for two weeks. We wanted to come out, get loose, get some swings.”
Post 13 (0-3) returns to Legion play on Tuesday against Garrett County Post 71/208/214 at the Hot Stove Complex at 6 p.m.
“It’s been competitive, they got the age on us,” coach McAlpine said. “Me and Phil (Carr) know it’s gonna be a tough series. Every game should be close, either one of those games could’ve gone either way. We struggled a little bit at the plate the first two games. Hopefully, we can build off what we did tonight. We didn’t have a lot of hits, but we had a bunch of hard hits.”