Cole Isom faced the toughest decision a baseball coach has to make when it comes time to play the region tournament opener. Start your ace or save the ace? Isom chose the latter and the gamble paid off as Gage Montes pitched a complete game to help Christian County beat Trigg County 9-3 Sunday in the region quarterfinals at Colonel Field.
The Colonels advance to Monday’s semifinal against Caldwell County, who beat Union County 9-1. Isom now has the option of pitching Elijah Underhill (6-1, 1.53 ERA) and Aiden Lewis (7-1, 1.53 ERA) against the Tigers.
That’s because of the effort given by Montes in the opener. The Colonel eighth-grader threw 96 pitches, with 66 of them strikes. He didn’t walk a batter and was able to scatter 11 hits over the seven innings.
Montes (4-1) also got help from the Colonel defense that turned a double play and committed just one error.
The Colonels scored four runs in both the third and fourth innings. A balk scored Christian County‘s first run, and Brylle Javier singled home two more runs to put the Colonels up 3-0. Javier would later steal home for the fourth Colonel run of the inning.
The wheels fell off for Trigg County in the fourth inning when a Montes single and two walks loaded the bases. A dropped pop-up on the infield with two outs scored two more runs to extend the inning. A botched pick-off play then scored two more runs to up the Colonel lead to 8-0.
For the game, Trigg outhit the Colonels 11 to 6 but seven of the nine runs scored by the Colonels were unearned thanks to four Trigg errors.
The Wildcats made some noise in the seventh inning as Jay Humphries singled and Tyler Ahart smacked his third home run of the season to left field.
With two outs and two runners on, Isom paid a visit to the mound and gave Montes a vote of confidence by leaving him in. He induced a groundout to end the ball game.
No Colonel had more than one hit with Elijah Underhill’s double the only colonel extra-base hit.
Trevor Terrell had four singles for the Wildcats and Humphries added two. Ahart had all three Trigg RBI.
Isaac Peca, who was brilliant in Trigg County‘s district semifinal win over Crittenden County, only pitched to two batters and threw eight pitches before leaving with arm soreness. Aaron Despain pitched well in an emergency role. He allowed only three hits over 4+ innings and struck out six. Only one of the eight runs he allowed was earned.
Sunday’s win was Christian County’s third over Trigg County this season and marked only the second time Trigg and Christian have met in the region tournament with the Colonels winning the last matchup 3-1 in 2015.
Trigg County’s season ends with a record of 13-19.
Christian County ups its record to 27-7 and will play Caldwell County in Monday’s semifinal at Hopkinsville High.
The other semifinal features Lyon county against Henderson County as all four district champions advanced to the semifinals.
