The Oxford baseball team claimed victory in the second of three games in the 2022 edition of the Crosstown Classic Series on Friday night, defeating Lafayette 6-3 to clinch the series victory.

The Chargers (5-2) rode a strong offensive performance to a victory after sneaking away with a win in a low-scoring pitching duel on Tuesday night.

The Commodores (3-3) struggled to get into a rhythm all night against Oxford starter Brady Stinnett, who gave up a run in the first inning before settling in and retiring 10 out of the next 12 batters.

The sophomore righty finished his night with five innings pitched, surrendering two earned runs on six hits while striking out six batters.

“Brady really toughed it out tonight, I thought he did a good job of keeping his composure,” said Oxford head coach Cade Hoggard. “He was missing a little bit with his fastball but he was getting his off-speed pitches over for strikes.”

Oxford got on the board early and often, jumping all over Lafayette starter Everett Thompson and knocking him out of the game after just three innings of work.

“I thought our guys had some good at-bats,” Hoggard said. “We’ve been plagued with striking out early in the season and I thought we battled, even with two strikes, and put the ball in play. That’s something we’ve been stressing and good things happen when you do that.”

The Chargers carried a two-run lead into the sixth inning, when Stinnett handed the ball over to Ty Wicker to finish the game. The senior answered the call, striking out the side in the sixth before putting the Commodores down with a whimper in the seventh.

“You give him a three-run lead, you feel pretty good about it,” Hoggard said of Wicker. “He just competes. He’s in the zone, he works fast, his strike percentage is through the roof… coming in after Brady he’s got a little more juice coming out of the pen so he’s able to miss some barrels with his fastball.”

First-baseman Ben Goubeaux, third-baseman Thomas Rayburn and left-fielder Cashe Shows each had two hits on the night for Oxford, combining to go 6-10 with two RBIs and three runs scored.

Junior Radley Hill was the only source of offense for Commodores, recording two hits in three at-bats and driving in all three Lafayette runs.

The bottom of the ‘Dores lineup failed to produce any offense, as their six through nine hitters combined to go 0-11 with seven strikeouts.

“We just didn’t play very well. We didn’t play like we wanted to win a baseball game tonight,” said Lafayette head coach John Walker. “They put the ball in play tonight, balls found holes, and we didn’t execute when we needed to execute.”

The Chargers and Commodores will play the final game in the series on Saturday night at Edwin Moak Field on the Oxford Middle School campus at 7 p.m.