Young leads the way as offense powers Chants to another win

Before he came to the plate in the bottom of the eighth inning Sunday, G.K. Young’s teammates made sure to remind him that he needed a double in his final at-bat to complete the cycle.

He would instead fly out to shallow center field, but the junior designated hitter had done more than enough already while rallying Coastal Carolina out of an early deficit with a two-run home run in the third inning and a two-run triple in the fifth to power the No. 19-ranked Chanticleers to a 10-6 win over Duke before a crowd of 2,062 at Springs Brooks Stadium.

“I’m going to be honest, I wasn’t even thinking about it until I went to the plate and everybody was like, ‘You know you’ve got to get a double to get a cycle, right?’” Young said of his near feat. “... I just tried to get it out of my mind. I really wanted to get a hit, but it didn’t work out – it’s fine.”

Offense has carried the Chants (4-2) through the early part of this season and it was no different against Duke (4-3) as they have now scored nine or more runs in four of their first six games.

Junior shortstop Michael Paez had another big day, going 2-for-4 with two RBIs and two runs scored, senior left fielder Anthony Marks was 2-for-5 with a run, senior right fielder Connor Owings finished 2-for-4 with an RBI and senior third baseman Zach Remillard also chipped in an RBI.

Young was the star Sunday, though, and he is off to a blistering start this season, pushing his batting average to .478 with a team-high 11 RBIs.

“I hope that he can put up the kind of numbers that he’s capable of,” Chants coach Gary Gilmore said. “I truly think he’s a guy that can be one of the better hitters in the country, I really do. I think he has that type of ability, and he’s a guy that, he’s so strong he mis-hits balls out of the ballpark. When he really gets it on time, it really, really goes.”

After hitting .301 with nine homers and 49 RBIs during a breakout 2015 season, the third-year player from Conway is certainly giving every indication that he’s primed to take another big step forward.

“I’m working on seeing the ball up and not trying to chase pitches out of the zone,” Young said. “I’ve been seeing a bunch of offspeed pitches early in the season already, and I’ve just been eliminating those pitches down and it’s been getting me in hitter’s counts. Me and coach were talking earlier today and the past two games I’ve been fouling off a bunch of pitches. He’s been joking around with me [that] I’m giving the fans a bunch of foul balls so that’s why they love me. But [I’ve] just been getting into hitter’s counts and not missing my pitch when I get it. Today it worked out for me.”

The mammoth power might have something to do with the fan-approval rating too. Young’s homer Sunday – his second of the season – hit off the Chants’ hitting facility beyond the fence and boardwalk in left-center and helped spark their comeback.

Coastal Carolina had fallen behind in the second when an error by Remillard and a wild pitch contribute to a three run inning against senior righty-hander Tyler Poole, with all of those runs unearned.

But that deficit didn’t last long as Coastal Carolina tied it at 3-3 in the bottom of the third inning when Paez smacked an RBI double and Young followed right after with his two-run homer.

In the fifth inning, Paez tied the game again with an RBI single and Young followed with a 12-pitch at-bat – including eight foul balls – before clubbing his two-run triple to right-center to give the Chants their first lead. Remillard then followed with an RBI infield single to make it 7-4.

They added two more runs in the sixth – when sophomore Seth Lancaster scored on a wild pitch and sophomore Billy Cooke crossed home plate before Paez was tagged out in a rundown – and one in the seventh on an RBI single from Owings.

“I think we’re that team that you don’t panic when you’re down three or four runs or whatever, especially if it’s early in the game,” Gilmore said. “And for sure if we’re playing at home, this ballpark was tailor-made to the type of power that we have. Everyone that we’ve played has done a fantastic job controlling our running game and some things like that, so that’s been big – that element has been for the most part taken away from us and it’s forced us to be somebody we’re truly not, or at least I don’t want us to be that one-dimensional. But so far we’ve been able to swing it enough to be competitive pretty much in every game.”

Although it was a 10-6 game heading into the ninth, the Blue Devils at least managed to make it interesting.

Sophomore reliever Bobby Holmes gave up a leadoff single to Jimmy Herron, two batters later hit Jack Labosky and with two outs walked Zack Kone to load the bases and bring the potential tying run to the plate.

Holmes then ran the count on Evan Dougherty to 3-0 before Remillard paid him a visit from third base.

“He was like, ‘You’re the guy, dude, you need to calm down, you’re speeding yourself up a little bit. You’ve got this.’ I stepped off, took a deep breath. He was right. I was trying to move too quick,” Holmes said. “It’s the first save I’ve been in of the year, [you need to] kind of get it under your belt again and get used to get it again. But it was good, my heart’s still beating.”

He battled back with two called strikes and a foul ball before getting Dougherty to ground out to third to end the game.

Holmes went 2 2/3 scoreless innings while allowing two hits, two walks and picking up two strikeouts to lower his ERA to 7.94 after a rough season debut.

“That last outing didn’t go my way to say the least, but I had great support from my teammates and coaches,” Holmes said. “They told me all along that I’m going to be fine, and I think just for myself at that point getting out there and having a clean outing against a pretty good team is a big confidence boost for myself.”

Poole, the Chants’ fifth-year senior righty, improve to 2-0 while giving up four runs (only one earned), five hits and two walks with five strikeouts five over 5 2/3 innings. He lowered his ERA to 0.84 in the process.

The Chants close out the 17th annual Caravelle Resort’s Baseball at the Beach tournament Monday at 4 p.m. with a rematch against Ohio State, who won the teams’ first meeting on Saturday.

“It’s kind of playing for the weekend championship so to speak,” Gilmore said. “Can we split with those guys and kind of at least be even-steven with everybody. It’s going to be a huge thing for our pitching staff as well because we’re not going to have [Andrew] Beckwith and we’re not going to have Bobby, so we’re going to have to find ways to do it with other people to step up and help us win.”

This story was originally published February 28, 2016 at 6:45 PM with the headline "Young leads the way as offense powers Chants to another win."