AUBURN — As Alex Parker readied to bat in the bottom of the fifth inning, his teammates started teasing him.

“Hey Al,” they said, “how many walks do you have this season?”

Parker replied, “Six or seven.”

They shot back, “That many?”

Five pitches later, Parker watched ball four sail into the catcher’s mitt and trotted off to first base.

“I like to swing the bat, I like to hit,” Parker said, “but I wasn’t going to swing at a ball out of the zone. I have faith in my teammates that they can get it done, too.”

On the next pitch, second baseman Joe Bryant cranked the ball to left field, plating Shayne Curtis from second base to end a wet, run-shortened 10-0 St. Dom’s victory over visiting Mt. Abram in the Western Class C baseball quarterfinal Thursday.

“We didn’t want to burn everyone out, so winning in five was good,” Parker said.

The No. 2 Saints (14-3) benefited from five walks and a hit batter in the first inning to jump out to a 7-0 lead. They plated another in the second and two more in the fifth. Three pitchers combined on the one-hit shutout as the No. 7 Roadrunners (9-6) had a hard time digging out of their early hole.

“You can’t give a Bob Blackman-coached team seven runs on a silver platter like that,” Mt. Abram coach Ryan Palmer said. “The last few innings, that was good baseball.”

Mt. Abram starter Tim Smith finished with nine walks in two and one-third innings, though Palmer said that despite a persistent light rain, weather wasn’t the issue.

“I think if he’d been having problems with the weather, he’d have been fixing the mound a bit more, but he never complained about it. He’s had some games this year where he’s gone to a lot of deep counts, but he always seemed to get out of it without much damage. The only thing I said when I took him out was, ‘Some days you have it, some days you don’t.'”

Curtis walked, Parker singled and Bryant walked to load the bases in the first. Smith hit Kurt Johnson with a pitch to score Curtis, and Chris Bryant and Garrett Darnell walked to score two more.

Johnson, Chris Bryant and Darnell all came around, along with No. 9 hitter Will Desmarais, on Desmarais’ single, a pair of stolen bases and an error. The Saints sent 11 hitters to the plate in the first.

“When you get them, you have to take advantage of it,” Blackman said. “Also, it was good to get the game in, because now it gives us the extra day.”

In the second, another pair of walks, a stolen base and an error produced the Saints’ eighth run, and after a pair of scoreless innings as Palmer replaced Smith with Josh Beedy, St. Dom’s connected for three hits and a pair of runs to finish things off in the fifth.

St. Dom’s will host the winner of the matchup between Livermore Falls and Telstar, which was postponed from Thursday to Friday at 2:30 p.m., on Saturday.

Palmer, meanwhile, said after the game Thursday that he was stepping down as the Roadrunners’ coach.

“After four years, I have nothing but positive memories,” Palmer said. “Our AD has been fantastic, my assistant, Barry London, has been great. I know I can leave here with my head held high.”