Spring Sports: Here's a Look at Gaither High's Baseball Team

The Gaither Cowboys could have been easily predicted to finish in the middle of the pack in District 9, this year.

However, the Cowboys find themselves at the top of the district, nipping at the heels of first place King. Gaither is just one game behind in district play and would have won the tiebreaker with King, had the Lions lost to Chamberlain on April 15.

They didn’t. Neither did the Cowboys.

In the Cowboys final district game versus Leto, they knocked around a Falcon ball club 13-1 that offered little resistance and handed a few runs over on errors. A few bench players, stocked the Falcon line up that only managed one run and one hit with four fielding errors. Gaither jumped on starting Leto pitcher Alex Chinea with two runs in the first, four in the second, one in the third, and six in the fourth.

The Cowboys got to pad their stats a little bit, heading into the home stretch of the season.

Sophomore Oscar Mercado went 3-for-4 with a triple and RBI in that Leto game. He currently is second on the team in hits with 17. He is also batting .321, and has 10 RBIs. Junior Matt Frey is batting .350 and leads the team with 21 hits. Frey went 3-3 with 2 RBIs against Leto.

The Cowboys have a three-man pitching rotation with junior Eric Collier cracking the rotation as the fourth pitcher. Collier has pitched over 20 innings and faced 94 batters. In that time, he’s struck out 23 and walked just 15. Collier might be needed to step into that third spot as junior Alex Milne is struggling a bit this year. The Robinson game on February 15 and the Plant City game on April 13 skewed his 6.12 ERA over 32 innings but that is a significant drop from last year when he finished with a 3.13 ERA and pitched 47 innings.

They will need to have at the very least, two solid pitching performances to make regionals. As the No. 2 seed, Gaither will take on the seventh seed, Chamberlain, in the district quarterfinals. Gaither swept the series versus Chamberlain with a combined score of 11-4. They should get past a woeful Chief team that has won only one district game and only three total games this season.

If they get through to the semifinals, they will face the highest seed that gets through the first round. This will more than likely be a re-match against Leto. A win in that semifinal punches their ticket to regionals. The final will determine district champion and who plays the regional quarterfinal on the road.

The tournament will be hosted by Leto, and starts on April 25 at 7 p.m.

Stay tuned to Carrollwood Patch for updates on the Cowboys run at a district title.