By Carlos Alvarez
The East Los Angeles College baseball team defeated Glendale Community College in walk-off fashion, 2-1, in extra innings (10th inning) on Feb. 24.
With runners in scoring position, ELAC’s sophomore center fielder Kevin Amezquita hit a routine ground ball to second that was thrown away. The errant throw scored the winning run from third that set off a celebration on the field.
Amezquita was 2-for-4 with two singles, a run scored and a walk.
“We had many opportunities throughout the game. We are lucky to come out with the win, we’ll take it,” ELAC Head Coach James Hines said.
ELAC heads into its South Coast Conference home opener on March 3 at 6 p.m. against El Camino College Compton-Center on a five-game winning streak.
With the victory, ELAC’s overall record moves to 6-6 after starting the season 1-6. Glendale moves to 4-10 in the season.
“It’s good way to start conference with a .500 record after our bad start to the season. Let’s see what our guys’ mentality is as we head to conference play,” Hines said.
Leading the way for ELAC was its pitching staff. Freshman starting pitcher Julian Vizcarra and six relief pitchers held Glendale to one run on only two hits.
“Our pitchers did a fantastic job. It’s fun catching them in close games. They all went out there and competed,” ELAC sophomore catcher Joshua Carrasco said.
Vizcarra pitched three effective innings allowing one earned run, two hits while striking out three.
Glendale freshman starter Ryan Losman was just as good dominating Husky batters in his limited outing. Losman pitched 3 2/3 innings, allowing two hits while striking out five.
“He moved the ball well, our guys weren’t able to adjust. He had a strong outing,” Hines said.
The winning pitcher was ELAC sophomore Gabriel Ramos (2-2) who pitched three dominant scoreless innings while striking out three.
“Our guys pitched well today. They attacked the strike zone and had success doing it,” Hines said.
Hines said that with this being the Huskies’ last non-conference game,his plan going into the game was to give some relief pitchers some work before conference play starts.
With many solid arms in their pitching staff, the one uncertainty heading into conference play for ELAC is its offense.
“We were okay offensively, but we need a better approach at the plate. We had some opportunities to score but we just didn’t come through,” Hines said.
ELAC collected a total of five hits for the game, none of them coming with runners in scoring opportunity.
According to Carrasco, the team is frustrated by all the miss opportunities, but it’s not due to a lack of focus or effort.
“We are excited to start conference. We were down early in the season, but we have something good going on right now. We have a good group guys, it’s going to be fun,” Carrasco said.