NAYLOR -- Naylor third baseman Chase Sarabia missed a ground ball in the top of the first inning, recording an error. In his first at-bat he grounded out to end the first.
He was furious, and he took his frustrations out on the ball.
After a pair of singles, a walk and a hit batsmen gave Naylor a 4-0 lead over Greenville to start the second, Sarabia was due up again.
With the bases loaded, he cocked back and unleashed on a 1-0 pitch and sent it over the fence in left field for a grand slam, clearing the bases and doubling Naylor's lead before being met at the plate by a swarm of his teammates.
"I was just really mad, so I was just swinging the bat as hard as I could," Sarabia said.
He wasn't done, though.
An RBI single from Chance Smith and a score on a passed ball lifted the score to double digits at 10-0 in the third.
Sarabia stepped to the plate again, this time with runners at the corners.
"We know Chase gets mad a lot, you know, when he misses ground balls and stuff like that, so when he gets mad like that, we pick him up," Naylor pitcher Eli Roark said. "We tell him to go hit something, or something like a tire, and he listens and gets back in the groove."
He sent another 1-0 pitch sailing. Sarabia smacked a three-run homer over the fence in straightaway center.
"The first one I was really mad. The second I was just trying to put the ball in play and it got out," Sarabia said. "(Hitting two home runs) feels really good."
An RBI double from Matt Rigdon and an RBI single on a hard grounder from Sean Cline ended the game with a score of 15-0 in just the third inning.
"Today was a big win for us," Naylor head coach James Bond said. "Greenville is a really good team. They're well-coached. We wanted the two seed in conference. Want a bye.
"I thought the boys practiced hard yesterday, and I thought we came out, stayed back and drove the ball really well and took care of business.
Sarabia surely wasn't mad anymore after he saw his stat line and his teammates dumped the team's water container on him after the game. He put up a 2 for 3 performance with the aforementioned home runs, two runs scored and seven RBIs.
"He's a great player. He'll probably be All-Conference, possibly All-State. He's a wonderful kid, and he's a big spark plug for our lineup every day," Bond said.
His big day complemented a near-perfect team performance from the Eagles, who only suffered seven outs before scoring their 15th run against a typically formidable Greenville team.
"There's not much you can say," Greenville head coach Jeremy Smith said. "This was an absolutely poor performance on our part, and as a coach it's my responsibility to make sure we're ready to play, and apparently that didn't happen today. So, I'll take full responsibility for that."
The Bears hadn't been held without a run all season. Typically, they're the ones blanking teams. Greenville (7-4) has kept four clean slates defensively this season and hadn't lost a game by more than five runs entering Thursday's matchup.
"Something I'd been talking to the boys about was our pregame was a little flat," Smith said. "... We talk about energy being a big factor for us to focus in on. I just felt like our energy is something we can control, and we didn't do a good job of doing that today."
The Eagles were energized and again proved they're a team to be reckoned with.
Naylor (8-2) was clicking on all cylinders and earned its largest margin of victory this year.
The hosts drew seven walks and were hit by errant pitches three times on the day. With eight hits, Naylor tallied more hits than outs at the plate.
"The dugout was up. When everybody's pumped up, we're on our game. That's how we win ball games," Roark said. "We didn't think it was going to be anywhere close to 15-0 against this team."
Roark only allowed one hit and struck out one, complementing his defense for a solid day despite only needing six outs for the win.
"My defense picked me up," Roark said. "My team pumped me up and I was just on today."