By Carlos Alvarez
The East Los Angeles College baseball team recorded its first win of the season, 12-3, against the Citrus College Owls. The Husky offense headed into Sunday’s game scoring a total of 3 runs on 8 hits while striking out 17 times in the two loses versus Riverside City College.
“We struggled against good pitching at Riverside (last weekend), but today we did enough to get the win,” Head Coach James Hines said.
Hines wasn’t so pleased with the overall performance of the team. He added that the game was sloppy for both teams.
“Our offense was okay. We missed our opportunities early in the game. Our base running needs to improve,” Hines said. Leading the offense were the number two through four hitters, sophomores Kyle Peralta, Andrew Gutierrez, Joseph Tellez, and Jonathan Velazquez.
Velazquez and Gutierrez had two hits each scoring five runs, while Velazquez had two runs batted in. Peralta and Tellez added three hits scoring two runs, while combining for three runs batted in.
The offense put the game away in the sixth inning scoring a total of eight runs. With the score tied at 2, Owls sophomore starting pitcher Oscar Gomez (0-1) could not get out of the sixth.
Gomez, who took the loss, pitched five shaky innings allowing 4 runs (3 earned) on 4 hits while striking out five Huskies, but also walking four.
After holding the Huskies to two runs through the first five innings Gomez seemed to run out of gas walking the first two batters he faced in the sixth. Head Coach Steve Gomez went to the mound and replaced Oscar Gomez with sophomore relief pitcher Christopher Holden.
Holden did not fare much better allowing consecutive singles to Peralta and Tellez to make the score 4-2 and still nobody out. With two outs and the score 8-2, the Owls defense were their own worst enemy allowing two more runs to score. Owls sophomore third baseman Warren Fishback committed a throwing error and sophomore catcher Keith Cooper was charged with a pass ball making the score 10-2.
Starting for the Huskies was sophomore Frankie Wright who lasted only four innings allowing one unearned run on three hits while adding two strikeouts. “His start was a challenge. He had his struggles out there,” Hines said.
Sophomore relief pitcher Elias Novelo came to relieve Wright in the fifth inning. Novelo (1-0), who got the win after pitching two and one third of an inning and allowed one run on three hits. “Our bullpen did a decent job. We walked too many batters,” “Hines said, when asked of the relief pitchers performances.
The Huskies added two more runs and the Owls one run to make the final score 12-3. “It’s one of those games when the score doesn’t tell the whole story. We got the win, but it was an ugly game” Hines said.
Hines added that a game like this exposes things that they can go back and work on during practice.
Huskies have all week to practice as their game with Rio Hondo College this Thursday was canceled. “There was a schedule mix up will try to schedule a game for Thursday if not will have all week to prepare for (College of the) Canyons on Saturday,” Hines said.
The Huskies travel to Canyons and face the Cougars at noon.