MOBILE, Alabama – The Baldwin County Tigers picked up their first win of the season with a 14-4 mercy rule victory over the Murphy Panthers in BayBears High School Classic play at Hank Aaron Stadium on Thursday.

Nate Jones (1-0) struck out four hitters in four innings and gave up four runs to get the win for the Tigers (1-3), who bounced back from an 0-3 start to the season.

“We had a terrible start to the year and we weren’t really expecting it,” Baldwin County head coach Peter Bezeredi said. “Hopefully this got that monkey off our back. Now that we got our first win I hope we can get on a roll.”

Designated hitter JT Salter had three hits and four RBIs in the win for BCHS. The Tigers scored in all five innings before the mercy rule was used to stop the game. Salter drove in the Tigers’ first two runs on a double in the first. In the second inning two BCHS runs scored off a Jones bunt and Murphy throwing error, Billy Johnstone had an RBI and Salter had an RBI double.

In the bottom of the third Baldwin County’s Zach Demko drove in a run on a sacrifice fly to center and the Tigers led 7-4. BCHS broke the game open with four more runs in the bottom of the fourth. Three runs scored on bases loaded walks and Demko added an RBI to give BCHS an 11-4 lead.

Salter drove in another run in the fifth and Kyle Buck’s two-run single gave BCHS a 14-4 lead and ended the game.

“We moved (JT) up to the four hole and he produced for us,” Bezeredi said. “We’ve just got to get everybody to play ball like we know how to play. We played three games like we had never seen a baseball before. We struggled in all phases in the first three games and I hope we can use this win to get on track. I hope we can get back to playing the style of baseball that we are used to at our school.”

BCHS will play at Satsuma on Tuesday at 5 p.m.