East Prairie needs typical strong play from Wallace during tough stretch

The East Prairie High School varsity baseball team is having to recover following a 9-7 loss to Class 2 No. 3-ranked Portageville on Monday, but unfortunately for the Eagles (11-9), they don’t have much time or upcoming opponents to ease their minds.

The Eagles are in the midst of a seven-game stretch in which they face teams with winning records, by far the most difficult time of their regular season.

“We didn’t play clean defensively and that hurt us,” East Prairie coach Gary Scott told Semoball.com following the loss to the Bulldogs. “But the guys played hard and never gave up. We hit the ball pretty well, just didn’t play clean enough to pull out the win.”

East Prairie committed six errors, which led to it blowing an early 4-3 lead. Those defensive lapses were joined by Scott’s team only getting hits from four players, which was a bit of an anomaly, particularly in the case of junior Ty Wallace.

Wallace didn’t notch a hit against Portageville or in a recent 6-1 win over Twin Rivers, though he did score two runs in the latter game. However, in a recent 13-2 beating of Campbell, Wallace had a hit and a run while against Delta he tallied two hits, drove in a run, and walked once.

“He’s been hitting the ball pretty good,” Scott said of Wallace earlier this season. “He does a good job.”

Wallace can contribute defensively in a number of spots on the diamond, and played catcher against Portageville and Twin Rivers, after pitching and playing shortstop against Campbell.

He has also played third base this spring, as well as left field and second base.

In his latest outing on the mound, Wallace worked 2 1/3 innings of relief against the Camels and didn’t allow a hit, an earned run, or a walk while striking out three batters.

He threw 17 strikes in his 26 pitches.

“He just pounds the strike zone,” Scott said of Wallace as a pitcher. “He gets ahead in the count, and he is able to mix in his breaking ball and his off-speed stuff.”

The Eagles will host Caruthersville (14-6) today at 4:30 p.m. before visiting Greenville (17-7) on Friday at 4:30 p.m.

East Prairie has four games squeezed into the schedule next week, beginning with a home game against East Carter (11-7) on Monday (4:30 p.m.) and a road test at Bernie (14-7) on Tuesday at 4:30 p.m.