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Baseball Shocker: Liberty 4, OP 2
Liberty High baseball coach Chad Wright said overconfidence was the cause of his Eagles’ latest loss, a 6-2 defeat at the hands of Battlefield on Friday.
That seems a misdiagnosis for a team that has lost 10 games and won just five. But even a sub-.500 team can catch a case of overconfidence after upsetting one of the area’s top teams.
Four days before falling to Battlefield, Liberty beat the Osbourn Park Yellow Jackets, 4-2, on April 28, shocking a team ranked No. 8 by the Washington Post. Osbourn Park entered that game with an 8-0 record in the Cedar Run District and 11-1 mark overall. They had beaten Liberty 12-0 on March 27.
The Eagles (1-7 in Cedar Run) played a near-perfect game to win the rematch, though.
“We looked totally sound. Everything was clicking on all cylinders,” Wright said. “It was huge, but I think we kind of got a little big-headed, coaching staff included….We knocked them off, thought we were going to walk though the rest of the district.”
Elsewhere in Fauquier County, the Kettle Run and Fauquier High baseball teams have also had recent success. Kettle Run improved to 6-9 with two recent wins, while Fauquier High beat Culpeper, 8-1, on Thursday to improve its record to 8-7.
Liberty had the best week, by far, though.
The Eagles took a quick 2-0 lead over OP (13-2 after weekend play) when Bryant Hines hit a two-run home run with two outs in the first inning.
“It seemed they were a little shell-shocked by that,” Wright said. “Before the game we told them [the Eagles] that Osbourn Park knew they were up two games in the district. They came out flat and we put it on them.”
Liberty built its lead to 4-0 through six innings behind the arm of starting pitcher Stephen Klier, a 6-foot-2 sophomore who was moved up from junior varsity earlier in the season. Klier threw a one-hit shutout over the first six innings before giving up a two-run homer in the seventh.
“He was on the money for us, hitting spots,” Wright said of Klier. “And everybody knew where to go with the ball – not making errors, not making miscues.”
After the late OP home run, Cody Donelan relived Klier and earned the save...
See the Wednesday print edition of the Fauquier Times-Democrat for the complete story.
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