April 22, 2019 – An eight-run fifth inning provided the margin of victory for the Santa Fe Saints baseball team in their 10-2 win in Jacksonville Saturday afternoon.
Tied 2-2, the Saints pounded out four hits in the inning and took advantage of three errors by the Blue Wave to break the game open. Cade Westbrook had two hits in the inning that saw 12 Saints come to the plate.
Westbrook followed a lead-off triple by Brock Edge with an RBI single to break the tie and capped off the inning with a bases-loaded double that scored all three runners.
“Westbrook had a couple of big hits in the inning,” said SF head coach Johnny Wiggs. “His three-run double sealed the deal.”
Meanwhile, Brooks Walton (4-2) earned the win with 5.2 innings of shutout relief. The freshman righthander out of Buchholz fanned five and didn’t walk a batter. Saints starter Donovan Benoit pitched a scoreless first but ran into control problems in the second. Emanuel Fernandez got the final out to close out the win.
“Brooks was tremendous in relief,” said Wiggs. “He came in and got some big outs with the bases loaded and then pretty much had in on cruise control the rest of the way.”
Westbrook had three hits in the game raising his average to .301. His four RBI gives him a team-high 38. Jarrod Cande and Garrett Mathes added two hits apiece.
The Saints (33-14, 14-8 MFC) are knotted up in a three-way tie for second place in the Mid-Florida Conference with Seminole State and St. Johns River State with each team having two games to play. The College of Central Florida clinched the regular season Championship with their 8-0 win over Daytona State Saturday.
The Saints will travel to Leesburg Monday to take on Lake Sumter State College in a game scheduled to start at 3 p.m. and will face Seminole State at home Tuesday at 3 p.m. in a makeup game of Friday’s rainout to finish up the regular season.
The MFC Tournament is scheduled to begin Friday, April 26 with the fourth-place finisher traveling to play the third-place finisher for the right to advance to a best-of-three series against the second place team. The second-place finisher in the regular season will host games one and three.
For all SF Athletics schedules, stats and more visit santafesaints.com.