If there has been a hallmark of the El Dorado Drillers over the last two seasons, it’s been their ability to overcome a slow start and finish with a flourish.
In 2021, the Drillers overcame an 0-3 start to win 12 of 13 games, including eight straight to post a 13-9 record.
This summer, the Drillers started 2-6, but fought back to go 15-6 the rest of the way to post a mark of 17-12, narrowly missing a trip to the elimination portion of the state tournament after going 2-1 in pool play.
The Drillers’ lone loss was a 4-2 setback at the hands of Little Rock, which came a day after El Dorado rallied from an 8-0 deficit to stun Sheridan.
The Drillers led 2-0 early on, but their bats were kept in check the rest of the way.
“We matched up Justin Dumas against them because we were confident that he was going to be one our best against them,” El Dorado Drillers coach Greg Harrison said. “He did a great job. He got into a little trouble in the fourth inning. He walked a few batters and we had a few calls in the field that didn’t go our way. The next thing you know, we went from being up 2-0 to being down 3-2.”
The Drillers topped Texarkana 6-5 in their final pool play game, but missed out on getting a wild card spot.
Offense played a key role in the success of the Drillers.
Shadarious Plummer had a terrific summer, posting a .594 batting average to lead the team.
Jacob Webster-Moore also enjoyed a huge summer, hitting .524 with one home run and 20 RBIs. He scored 22 runs to lead the team and his aforementioned RBI total tied him with Justin Dumas for the team lead.
Hunter Lawrence, Bretaveon Brown and Dumas also finished with batting averages that topped the .500 mark.
“We were really blessed with how we hit the ball this summer,” Harrison said. “We had a lot of guys hit north of .500 and these guys had 25, 30 plate appearances, so it wasn’t just one game. They continued to carry our team all summer long.
“The thing that gets challenging is when you lose guys for church camp or other events that are happening when they’re freshmen and sophomores and juniors in high school, you have to be able to have other guys that you can plug in and execute. We had that all summer long. We were able to reload with somebody else.”
On the mound, Daniel Roblee posted four wins along with a 1.56 ERA with his last start being a win over Texarkana in pool play at the Arkansas American Legion Junior State Tournament.
Cayson Martin led the Drillers with five wins as well as innings pitched.
“We used 18 different arms over the summer,” Harrison said. “Some guys are eighth-graders that really haven’t thrown much, but it was good to get them some time on the mound. We had some guys that are looking at getting more work for their respective high schools.
“It was good to see that we had 18 different guys that threw for us this summer. We had 16 guys that got more than 10 plate appearances, so we did what we could to mix and match.”
The summer is also about players learning new positions with the possibility of seeing playing time at those spots next year for their respective high schools.
El Dorado’s Kolin Parker saw playing time both in the outfield and at first base.
“Coach (Jeff) Burson asked me before the summer started is that he wanted Kolin Parker to get some work in the outfield and possibly at first base,” Harrison said. “He spent the majority of his career at third base and pitching, but we got him some work at first base and in the outfield.
“He had a big game at Sheridan. He caught a fly ball in foul territory and there was a runner at third base, but his throw to the plate kept the runner at third.
“It was good to see him execute in those situations to where it gives me something that I can tell coach Burson. Holden Lowry had predominantly held down third base, and Kolin has a good bat that you want in the lineup.”
One spot where the Drillers struggled some was finding depth at catcher, but they may have found some for next year with Webster-Moore and Brody Little getting some playing time there.
“Catching was the biggest problem to be able to fill in this year because we were so limited after our starting catcher,” Harrison said.
Harrison was pleased with the success the Drillers had playing against tough competition this summer.
“We did what we could to match up our guys whenever we had tougher competition whether it was (Arkansas) Pulpwood or Texarkana,” Harrison said.
“One thing I always try to look at is see who the local high school teams are playing, particularly El Dorado because a lot of the teams El Dorado sees during the spring season also have American Legion baseball programs.
“We’re just doing what we can to try and get quality competition for our guys and doing what we can to push them to get better.”
Next year, the Drillers will be much younger thanks to several players that will be moving up be eligible to play only for the El Dorado Oilers.
“We’re going to lose a lot of guys to the Oilers,” Harrison said. “We’ll lose Sawyer Cropper, Trey Murphy, AJ Alsobrook, Hunter Lawrence, Justin Dumas, Shadarious Plummer, Kolin Parker and Mike Osgood, so we did have an older group. That kind of worked against us, but we expected people were going to throw their best against us.”