ACE, Rutland baseball teams ready for opening round of playoffs

With the regular season finally complete, two Bibb County teams will be representing Macon’s public schools in the GHSA state baseball playoffs beginning this Friday.

ACE fared the best of any public school in Macon, though it was still something of a down year as the Gryphons failed to win their region for the first time in four seasons. Still, ACE finished third in Region 2-A Division I and secured a spot in the playoffs with an 18-11 overall record and a 15-3 finish in region play.

The Gryphons were awarded the No. 17 seed in the 32-team GHSA Class A-Division I bracket, which was announced Monday morning. This means they will travel in the first round, something they have not done in several seasons.

“If I’m being completely honest, I’d venture to tell you that being 17th was disappointing,” ACE head coach Josh McLendon said Tuesday. “We really make it a goal every year to try and play one playoff game at home in front of the fans every year, and we missed that by one spot this year.

“Now, if you look back last year at when we had a home game and lost to a tough Pierce County team — that’s what we have to go and do,” he said. “We want to play spoiler for them, even if they’re only one seed higher than us. I think it did fire us up a little bit getting that No. 17 spot.”

“Them” in this case refers to  No. 16 Elbert County, who are set to host the Gryphons for a doubleheader Friday at 5 p.m. in Elberton, on the South Carolina border about two and a half hours northeast of ACE.

The Blue Devils went 21-10 and 15-6 in their region, Region 8, to finish third. It was a top-heavy league with four 20-win squads, including first-place Providence Christian Academy which finished the season on a 16-game winning streak and earned the No. 5 seed in the private school bracket.

“They’re a strong team, a really well-coached team. They’re scrappy, for lack of a better term,” McLendon said of Elbert County. “They do the little things well — they hit and run, they bunt and run, they like to squeeze if they get a man over to third… Baseball is baseball. The team that’s hot at the right time will get it done.”

The head coach thinks his team is perfectly capable of that after a season of ebbs and flows. ACE had plenty of good moments — they spent a sizable chunk of the year in first place in Region 2 and got an electric win over No. 8 Washington County in the final week of the season — but also struggled unexpectedly at times, as they did in their series against eventual region champion Bleckley County.

“The message has to be ‘why not us,’” McLendon said. “We played a really tough non-region schedule, too. We’ve tried to prepare them for this. We saw a UGA commit on the mound twice against Peach County, we saw a Kennesaw State commit twice, we saw the Auburn commit who pitches for Washington County. We have experience against high level competition.”

Brice Whitley and McLendon’s son, Jake, will be key hitters. Jake McLendon sports a .375 batting average and .500 on-base percentage, while Whitley is hitting .320 with 35 steals in the leadoff spot.

The key for the Gryphons, though, will be their youthful pitching, according to their head coach.

“Our top two starters all year have been sophomores. You don’t want to put a whole lot of pressure on them because they’re young, but at the same time they understand this: our success in the playoffs will come down to how well these guys pitch,” McLendon said.

Should the Gryphons defeat the Blue Devils, it’s likely that No. 1 Gordon Lee — a program that has built a sort of dynasty in recent seasons as a baseball powerhouse — would await them in the second round.

“We can’t look ahead to Gordon Lee,” McLendon said. “We’ve got to focus on this week, even though we know our path is challenging.”

Strong non-region performance gives Rutland playoff berth

The Rutland Hurricanes will be the only team representing the Bibb County School District in the baseball playoffs this year, as they snuck into the Class 2A tournament thanks to a good performance against non-region teams.

The Hurricanes finished the season 8-13-1 on the season but went 0-12 in their region, an outcome that appeared disastrous on paper but becomes clearer when taking a closer look at Region 2-2A.

“We’re in a really tough region and could not find a lot of success there this year. Every team in this region made the playoffs,” head coach and Rutland athletic director Darryl Silas said Tuesday. “We’re also starting a lot of freshmen, we’re a very young team. We graduated three starting pitchers last year who were seniors.”

The strong region included Morgan County, the No. 1 seed in the 2A bracket. While the 0-12 record against region foes was not ideal, Rutland succeeded against many of its traditional rivals to go 8-1 in non-region play.

“We were able to muster a lot of wins against teams outside of that difficult region, and a lot of those teams were Macon teams, which is always good,” Silas said. “In the past we would not be in the playoffs since we finished outside the top four in our region, but the new power rankings helped us.”

The Hurricanes got the No. 29 spot, just getting in thanks to their difficult schedule. They will face the No. 4 Redan Raiders, who went 18-9 overall and 10-0 in Region 6-2A, in a doubleheader on the road Friday at 2 p.m.

The Raiders, who hail from Dekalb County, played some tough non-region competition. Their most impressive win came against the Gainesville Red Elephants, a 5A playoff team. But Redan’s region was also relatively weak. The second-place team, Drew Charter, finished the season 12-12.

“I think it will be fun to go up there and get the experience of a playoff series, going on the road and getting to play a game,” Silas said. “We have a young team and we’re always trying to get more experience. It’s going to provide them with something that can build their mental capacity to continue to play this game with fidelity and get better in the future.”

The matchup against a higher seed could be tough. Silas said the team could usually make it through three or four innings and keep pace with high-ranked teams — usually in a 0-0 tie, he said — but tended to lose steam once their pitching faced opposing hitters the third time through the order.

“By the third time around, talented hitters like the ones we’ve faced this year have been able to put the ball in play. That’s what experienced hitters do,” Silas said.

Two key players that have defined the season for the Hurricanes are Tate Summerday and Kaelix Marcus.

Summerday has excelled on the mound as one of Rutland’s only consistent pitchers returning from last year. He’s also been a key contributor at the plate and in the field. The Region 2-2A Utility Player of the Year has a .385 average with a 1.126 OPS and four triples out of the leadoff spot.

“He’s been a huge shining light for us this year. He’s a difference maker,” Silas said. 

Marcus had the second-most stolen bases in the region, 13, to earn himself a spot on the All-Region second team.