The Glendale baseball team’s disappointing season continued last Thursday as they lost their fourth straight game of the season to the Pierce Brahmas, 10-5, at Stengel Field, putting their record at a sub-par 4-8 for the season.
Whenever a team scores 10 runs, it is either because of really good offense or really bad defense.
For this game, Glendale head coach Chris Cicuto did not give much credit to the Brahmas, and blamed the loss on mistakes that his team made.
“We really gave them five of their runs with our walks, wild pitches and missed double-plays,” said Cicuto. “Pierce just did a good job of capitalizing on our mistakes.”
Glendale’s starting pitcher, Clay Young, had a solid outing, striking out four batters in 4 1/3 innings, though he did walk six batters and committed back-to-back wild pitches that put Pierce on the scoreboard first as they went up 3-0 at the top of the second inning.
Young received one run from the offense. It came in the bottom of the second inning when Bill Spottiswood and Blake Gailen advanced to second and third on a wild pitch after they both hit singles.
An error by the Pierce third-basemen scored Spottiswood.
On the stat sheet, Young will be the losing pitcher but his pitching was good enough for the Vaqueros to get back in the game. After giving up the three early runs, Young settled down and shut out the Brahmas until fatigue set in letting Pierce score another run at the top of the fifth inning. This resulted in Cicuto having to take him out of the ballgame.
“After the second inning, I calmed down and pitched pretty well,” said Young, who allowed five of the 10 runs. “There were some balls called that could have easily been strikes, but that’s just the way it is sometimes.”
Gailen relieved Young as pitcher and got out of the fifth inning only giving up one run, which is all you can ask of a relief pitcher in a bases-loaded situation with only one out.
The Vaqueros, knowing they had to start getting on base and scoring more runs, made it 5-2 at the bottom of the fifth inning on an in-field single by Bryan Aguila scoring David Quintana, who started off the inning with a double.
Gailen continued his good relief pitching at the top of the sixth inning getting three quick outs, giving the Vaqueros momentum to get back in the game.
But Glendale did not get any runs in the sixth and seventh innings.
The Brahmas made it 7-2 going into the bottom of the eighth inning. While the game seemed to be out of reach, the Vaqueros were not going to give up.
A two-run double by Gailen scoring Daniel Lee and Spottiswood made it 7-4, and gave the Vaqueros momentum and hope. Mark Torre made it 7-5 with his single that scored Gailen.
The usually reliable Spottiswood was brought in to prevent Pierce from scoring any more runs — a tough situation for the pitcher who had gone 2-3 at the plate with two singles and a walk.
Pierce would score three more runs at the top of the ninth making the game 10-5, creating too much of a deficit for the Vaqueros to come back from.
“I think the three runs in the second inning set the tone for the rest of the game,” said Pierce head coach Bob Lofrano. “Glendale played us well, but they made some crucial pitching mistakes that cost them the game.”
“The players always give good effort, but we just didn’t play smart today,” Cicuto said.