By Luis Quintero
RCC baseball lost 11-4 at home against Pierce College on March 29, bringing their overall record to 19-9.
Coming in confident on a two-game win streak, the Tigers got off to an unlucky start. Trailing 4-0 in the bottom of the third inning, they needed to rack up runs to get ahead of Pierce’s Brahma Bulls.
The spectators remained silent as freshman Junior Coleman stepped to the plate. The tension between the Tigers and Brahma Bulls was thick, but Coleman managed to slam a single and took off to first base, stealing second on the next pitch.
Once freshman Jacob Rodriguez went to bat, spectators became tense and could not help but watch with uneasy eyes. He reassured the crowd with a solid hit up the middle, allowing Coleman to score.
“Once we get our bats hot it’s usually game over,” said infielder Jacob Rodriguez.
Off of two consecutive pick off errors, freshman Dylan Kanoho stole second and third, building off of the momentum that Rodriguez gave with his RBI triple.
After RCC outfielder Joseph Hodapp’s RBI double, the Tigers managed to pull one, making the score 4-3. However, the momentum built was stopped abruptly, as the Tigers only managed to scrape one more run in the remainder of the game.
The Tigers ended the game with four runs as the Brahma Bulls scored three runs in the sixth inning and added four more in the ninth.
“There’s a ton of things we lacked in this game from the get go,” said head coach Rudy Arguelles. “It’s unacceptable, it’s inexcusable, it can’t happen again.”
Arguelles understood what the Tigers lacked from previous games and what improvements had to be made in order to bring home future wins.
“We’re getting way out of our zone swinging at balls,” Rodriguez said. “From the pitching stand point I would just say we had relievers come in and not throwing strikes, throwing a lot of balls, lot of errors that aren’t helping. Things like that add up and make us lose ball games.”
The team collectively understood what went wrong in the game and have plans on how to improve.
“We’ve had some games where we’ve lacked consistency on the mound, we’ve lacked consistency offensively, we’ve broken down defensively but we’ve always been able to come back, respond and bounce back.” Arguelles said. “We’ll bounce back.”
