Reds take tourney title – No. 4 seed beats top-ranked Cubs in championship
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The Reds posted a five-run third inning Tuesday night and tacked on four more in the fifth, allowing them to hold off the top-seeded Custom Granite Cubs for a 13-7 victory in the league’s tournament championship game.
Down 1-0 after Cubs leadoff man Dylan Tubb had stolen home in the bottom of the first, the Reds quickly took the lead in the top of the second.
Nicholas Tilton doubled to lead off the frame, and starting pitcher John Roller Jr. followed with a single to left, tying the game at 1-1. Roller then stole second, took third on an errant throw by the Cubs’ catcher, and came home when the throw back from third went wide.
After shutting down the Cubs thanks to three strikeouts in the bottom of the inning, the Reds built a 7-1 lead thanks to third-inning hits by Ethan Bandy, Jacob Dodd, Tilton and Roller. The Cubs answered with two runs in the bottom of the frame, before reliever Wesley Parkhurst fanned two straight hitters with the bases loaded to end the threat.
The Reds’ Tilton and Roller came through with back-to-back doubles to pen the fifth, and their team added four more runs to its cause to take an 11-3 lead.
Jordan Tidwell belted a two-run, two-out double in the Cub half of the fifth, plating two of his team’s four runs. But the Reds’ Parkhurst and Tilton both scored in the sixth against Tubb, who was brought on in relief, and the Cubs went down with no further runs in the bottom half of the inning.
The Reds, who finished the regular season with a 5-4 record, defeated the White Sox and Braves in the opening two rounds of the tournament before knocking the top-seeded Cubs into the losers’ bracket. The Cubs rebounded, however, topping the BLC Braves in the losers’ bracket final to earn a shot at the title.