The Cleveland A’s beat the Ooltewah Cardinals Sunday 13-1, improving their record to 8-6 on the year.

“The score may not reflect it, but the Cardinals put up a tough fight, they are a strong team with loads of potential. In the first Inning, we made some mental coaching mistakes making outs at third and home. We scored two in the first, but should have scored more. I take full responsibility in that and we rebounded nicely,” said A’s coach Billy Massingale.

The A’s tried to play a little long ball Sunday with Tyler Hogan smacking a solo shot to deep left. Jon “Ozzy” Robinson and Adam Hunsucker both hit line drive shots high off the fence. In all, the A’s had five players with more than two runs batted in.

“Up and down the line-up everyone hit well,” Massingale said. “Six different batters had more than one hit. Robinson lead everyone going 4-4 with a double. B.J. Hogan, Adam Hunsucker, Will Ellis, Tyler Hogan and myself all had at least two hits.”

Winning pitcher Ryan Linden was locked in on the mound booking 11 strikeouts and no walks.

“That’s always key when you can pitch with no walks. Walks always seem to come back and haunt you and Ryan did a great job keeping them off the bases today,” the coach praised.

Ryan only allowed two hits in the win.

“Our starting pitching has been really carrying us the last few games as we have won five straight now. As long as we can keep that up and not making any errors in the field, I see us going along way the rest of the season and into the playoffs,” Massingale said. “We’ve got a tough game next week playing the Braves, but if we keep playing A’s baseball we should be all right.”