By Brandon Guijarro
CHRONICLE STAFF
Despite their late 9th inning rally, The Cypress Chargers fell short, snapping their four game winning streak at home against LA Pierce.
The Chargers delivered the first run of the game in the bottom of the third on an RBI fielder’s choice from Nathan Jackle, making it a 1-0 lead.
In his second start of the season, Nick Baustista No. 22, was off to a strong start allowing only one hit with four strikeouts through the first three innings. The top of the fourth came along and that was when The Charges struggled to get outs.
LA Pierce started off the fourth inning with a leadoff triple from Robbie Treto who would come in to score on an RBI groundout from Ryan Barry. The next batter, Jorge Romero struck out swinging, but was able to reach first base due to a wild pitch from Bautista. After the next two batters for LA Pierce reached base, Chargers’ head coach Anthony Hutting called on his bullpen and made a pitching change. Bautista would leave the game giving up four earned runs on three hits while striking out five through 3 1/3 innings.
Dylan Alanis came into pitch for Cypress, facing a one out bases loaded jam. LA Pierce tacked on four more runs in the inning due to defensive mistakes by Cypress. LA Pierce led the game 5-1, after a rough fourth inning from The Chargers that included two hits, on two wild pitches and three errors.
“We’re gonna go back to work at practice and clean some things up and continue to keep grinding,” said Hutting when asked how they can improve on the team’s defensive mistakes.
The Chargers answered back in the bottom of the fourth with a three-run homerun from Mario Tostado, which would make it a 5-4 ballgame after four innings.
After knocking in one more run in the fifth inning making it a 6-4 lead, LA Pierce was held scoreless over the next four innings after great pitching performances out of the bullpen from Carson Frazier and Ryan Brown. They combined for nine strikeouts with three hits while not allowing a run through 4 ⅔ innings pitched.
“Frazier and Brown gave us a chance to win and kept us in the game long enough,” said Hutting
Down two runs in the ninth, The Chargers fought until the last out. Jackle started the ninth inning rally off with a double and was later able to reach third base on a wild pitch. Noah Karliner singled to right field, which brought in Jackle to come across and score, cutting the deficit to one. With two outs and the tying-run on first, up next to hit was Isaac Rodriguez. Rodriguez hit a shot to center field, but couldn’t find a gap as it was caught to end the ballgame.
The Cypress Chargers now fall to 4-2 on the season. Hutting stated after the tough loss, “Definitely didn’t play our best baseball, but we got another game on Thursday.”
The Chargers look to get a bounceback win on the road against Long Beach City College.
