BIG SWING — Big Red’s Nolan Blackburn follows through after making contact for a base hit against Weir High Monday at the Crimson Complex. - Andrew Grimm

So far, so good, as Big Red started a string of four home games in as many days Monday evening with a 12-2 run rule victory over visiting Weir High.

The win improves Big Red to 4-4 on the season and gives them a season sweep of the Red Riders on top of a strong start to a buy, important week.

“That’s one good thing about baseball, if you have one bad game, the sun comes out and you play the next one and can put it behind you,” Big Red head coach Fred Heatherington said. “It’s busy week, playing four days in a row, but that’s the way baseball is supposed to be — play every day and see what you got.

“It’s a good start to the week, but we have to come out ready to play again (today) and the days after that.”

Weir High’s Cayden Braswell connects with a pitch against Big Red on Monday. - Andrew Grimm

After plating a run each in the first and second innings, a seven-run outburst in the third blew things open for Steubenville. After Weir plated a pair of runs in the top of the fifth, Big Red pushed three more across in the bottom half to enact the run rule to bring things to an early end and save two innings of pitching, which could prove to be important with the workload this week.

Freshman AJ Borsch tossed all five innings for Big Red to earn his first win of the season, striking out 10 and walking five. He allowed four hits and just one of the two runs was earned.

“I thought AJ did a real good job,” Heatherington said. “His pitch count got up a little bit, but it had been a while since he pitched, that’s just the way the schedule goes, but he did a good job and defensively we did a good job behind him.

“We hit the ball, we had 11 hits, but now we have to be ready to do it again (today). Every day is a different day.”

For Weir High (5-8), a combination of mistakes eventually caught up with them as two pitchers combined to walk five and hit four batters.

Big Red third baseman Matt Fabbro fires the ball to first for an ou against Weir High. - Andrew Grimm

“Whether it was hit batsman, walks, it hurt us,” Weir High coach Dave Cowden said. “The first few innings we had guys 0-2, 1-2 and beaned three or four of them, we just gave them too many freebies. I don’t take anything away from (Big Red), they put the ball in play and had really good at bats, their pitcher is a really nice pitcher, but we also had a lot of things that were self-inflicted.

“We’re getting to the point in the season where those kinds of mistakes have to stop. We’re still coaching them up, we’ve got a ways to go in the season to get where we want to be.”

In the big third inning, Borsch came up with the bases loaded and helped his own cause with a two-run single, doubling the lead. A couple batters later, Royal Mayo singled in two more runs, then Myles Cooper hit an RBI single. A couple of runs also crossed on wild pitches and Steubenville was on top 9-0 before Weir could get out of the inning.

The lone bright spot for the Red Riders came when Aleks Zanieski ripped a two-run single in the top of the fifth, but Big Red answered right back to end it in the bottom half.

Mayo, who finished 3 for 4 with two RBIs and two runs scored, led off with a double, Matt Fabbro followed it with a single, then Nolan Blackburn sent a ball into the outfield for an RBI knock to make it 10-2.

After a walk, Fabbro crossed the plate on a passed ball, then, two pitches later, Blackburn crossed the plate on another to push the lead to 10 and end the game early.

Fabbro and Cooper also had multi-hit days with a pair of base knocks and an RBI each.

UP NEXT

Weir High: Returns home to host Edison today.

Big Red: Will host Brooke today at the Crimson Complex. That game had been scheduled to be played at Brooke, but has been moved to Big Red.

Big Red 12, Weir High 2

WH 0-0-0 0-2 — 2 4 0

BR 1-1-7 0-3 — 12 11 1

WEIR HIGH (5-8): Williamson (LP, 2 1/3IP, 7R, 7ER, 5H, 1K, 3BB, 4HBP), McAllister (1 2/3IP, 5R, 3ER, 8H, 3K, 2BB) and McAllister and Williamson. Zanieski S, 2RBIs; Horstman S; McAllister S; Kaczmarek S.

BIG RED (4-4): Borsch (WP, CG, 2R, 1ER, 4H, 10K, 5BB) and Simmons. Mayo D, 2S, 2RBIs; Fabbro 2S, RBI; Blackburn S, RBI; Cooper 2S, RBI; Simmons S; Borsch S, 2RBIs; Gulan S.