BASEBALL: Panthers put Redbirds away early, win 20-1
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[With fifteen hits and eleven walks, Pinckneyville jumped all over visiting West Frankfort on Wednesday afternoon at Ridgon Field, pounding the Redbirds 20-1 in four and a half innings.
The Panthers sent sixteen men to the plate in the bottom of the first and eleven of them scored in a nine-hit inning for PCHS. Bryant Shute and Hunter Queen both had two-run doubles during the rally.
"I was happy to see us come out and take care of business against a team we were more talented than," said PCHS head baseball coach Alan Engelhardt. "It was a positive sign to see us put them away early and keep adding to move the game completely out of reach."
Joey Burris drove in two runs with a single in the bottom of the second, and also threw four innings on the mound as the winning pitcher. Burris surrendered a solo homer for his only earned run, giving up four total hits, no walks with a pair of strikeouts.
Shute came in for the top of the fifth and needed only seven pitches to get two strikeouts and groundout. He also drove in 5 runs on the day, finishing 3-for-5 with 3 doubles and 3 runs scored.
"I thought Joey did a great job of pitching with a lead and attacking and Bryant did a nice job of finishing the game," Engelhardt said.
Queen (2-4, 2B, 2 BB), Burris (2-5, 2 R, 3 RBI), Dylan Hardin (2-3, 2B, 2 R, 2 RBI), Chaz Ruffino (1-2, RBI), C.J. Opp (1-2, BB, R, RBI), Evan Chapman (1-2, 2 BB, R), Noah Hepp (1-3, 2B, R, RBI), Justin Bumann (1-1, R, 2 RBI) and Dustin VanMeter (1-1, 2B, R) also had hits for the Panthers. Marian Brammeier walked four times, scoring on three of them.
"Our defense was solid again and we did a nice job of hitting against a variety of pitchers," said Engelhardt. "It is always nice to get a lot of different players in to play, and we had several people come off the bench and contribute today."
Pinckneyville (15-13) is at Mascoutah on Thursday and at Greenville College for a tournament this Saturday.
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