By KEVIN ECKLEBERRY

Daily News

CEDARTOWN – They had the bats working.

The surging LaGrange Grangers exploded for nine runs in the first inning, and they rolled past Cedartown 15-4 on Thursday afternoon in a Region 5-AAAA game.

LaGrange completed a regular-season sweep of Cedartown to improve to 5-2 in the region, and it is alone in third place.

With five region games remaining, the Grangers are in great shape to nab one of the region’s four playoff berths.

Earlier in the season, the Grangers were struggling to get much going offensively against a difficult slate of opponents.

LaGrange has things working at the plate of late, though.

The Grangers have scored 40 runs in their past five games, and three times during that stretch they’ve reached double digits in runs.

One of the offensive standouts from Thursday’s game was freshman Will Alford, who had two doubles and a home run while driving in three runs.

Senior Cole Freeman, who has been red-hot, had three hits, including a double and a triple, and he drove in three runs.

Freeman also reached on a walk, and he scored four runs.

Seth Prather had a hit and two RBIs, Trent Bailey had an RBI double, and John Morgan had two RBIs with two runs scored.

Senior Ben Stogner, who was one of two LaGrange pitchers who appeared in the game, had a pinch-hit, RBI double that nearly cleared the fence.

Charles Crawford had a hit, two walks and he scored a pair of runs, and Brant Williams had a hit.

Williams was LaGrange’s starting pitcher, and he threw 4 2/3 innings to get the win, and Stogner pitched the final 2 ½ innings and gave up one run on four hits.

The Grangers will take a break from region play next week, although they’ll still play three games.

LaGrange resumes its region schedule on April 10 with a home game against Troup.