Farmington ends 'Dogs winning streak

SIKESTON -- The Sikeston Bulldogs' roller coaster season continued on Friday afternoon as they were stifled by the Farmington Knights, 9-2 at VFW Stadium.

One day after lighting up the scoreboard with 14 runs and three home runs on Thursday against Fredericktown, the Bulldog offense went quiet against the Knights, managing just six hits.

"We just didn't play well," said Sikeston coach Kevin Self. "I don't know why. I don't understand from one day to the next what the difference is. If I had that magic cure, I'd probably be selling it on the Internet. Coaches are looking for that all over in high schools. You don't know day to day what you're going to get or who's going to show up."

The Bulldogs (8-9) committed four errors early which directly led to six Farmington runs.

Farmington (7-6) grabbed a 2-0 lead in the top of the first inning. Eric Koppeis hit a sacrifice fly and a throwing error by the Bulldogs allowed Matt Usherwood to score.

Farmington scored three more runs in the top of the third to take a 5-0 lead. Josh Taylor had a run-scoring double. Josh Kimrey had a two-run single.

Sikeston broke the shutout in the bottom of the fourth as Cody Anderson singled to bring in Tyler Baker, cutting the lead to 5-1.

The Knights broke the game open with four runs in the top of the fifth to push the lead to 9-1.

Sikeston tacked on one final run in the bottom of the seventh. Jerod Scott's RBI-single brought home Garrett Limbaugh.

Sikeston's Joey Williams was the losing pitcher, throwing 2 1/3 innings, allowing five runs off four hits with four walks and two strikeouts.

Kimrey was the winning pitcher for the Knights, throwing six innings and allowing one run off four hits. He walked three and struck out three.

"Josh has had a pretty good year for us," said Farmington coach Craig Gibbs. "He had some trouble early in the year in getting through the middle part of the innings. He struggled a little tonight, but we let him fight through it."

Kimrey went 2-4 with two RBIs and a run, Stroup went 2-4 with a run and Koppeis went 2-3 with a run and an RBI.

Farmington had 11 hits in the game.

"We had 11 hits," said Gibbs. "It wasn't like we were beating the fence down, but we were putting the ball in play. I preach day in and day out that if you put the baseball in play then good things will happen."

Baker and Josh Jackson each had doubles for the Bulldogs. There were no multiple hitters for Sikeston.

Sikeston ended up committing five errors in the game and continued to have blunders on the base paths.

"When you don't make plays and you run the bases the way we did once again, that constitutes a loss," said Self. "If we can get everybody on the same page, doing the right things and ready to play, we can beat anybody in our conference or our district. But it seems like when we have a bad break we kind of melt. It just snowballs on us."

Sikeston will host Chaffee on Monday at 4 p.m. in a SEMO Conference game.