By: Eric Pacheco
Great pitching and clean defense have been the key to success for the Tigers all season.
Their current calling card held up again in a crucial rubber match versus the Santa Ana College Dons (25-8-1) who came into the game atop the Orange Empire Conference (OEC) standings.
The Tigers (23-11) were embarrassed in game one of the series, losing 15-2 in Santa Ana. Uncharacteristically, no pitcher was able to record more than eight outs and the defense committed five errors.
“Pitching … it’s always going to be pitching,” Tigers head coach Rudy Arguelles said “We didn’t get any of it in game one.”
In game two, freshman right-hander Ryan Jenkins improved to 3-0 in conference play, tossing a complete game five-hit shutout that gave the Tigers a 2-0 victory.
In the finale of the series, the Tigers went with a bullpen day as redshirt sophomore Jordan Townley got the start and went just over two innings before being relieved for the bulk of innings by the man they call “Toro,” sophomore lefty Julian Cazares, who went nearly six innings of scoreless baseball on the mound to help propel the Tigers to a 6-2 victory at Riverside City College Evans Sports Complex.
“I came into the game with the mindset of thinking I was starting,” Cazares said. “I just had to compete in the zone and work all pitches for strikes.”
It was easy sailing for Cazares until the fifth inning when he allowed three consecutive singles to the Dons hitters to start the inning. Cazares proved to be unphased as he induced a 1-2-3 double play followed by a flyout to get out of the inning which erupted the Tigers out of their dugout in cheers.
“I’ve been in those situations before, just tried to stay calm, pound the strikes, and let the defense work,” Cazares said.
“Toro coming in taking the mound, that was huge,” coach Arguelles also noted.
The Tigers offense would count on some timely hitting in the 3rd inning when they scored four runs on three hits, two of those being scored via a wild pitch.
“We knew Andeel was very fastball heavy today so we wanted to jump on the heater and leave anything down, if it starts down it’s going to stay down,” freshman catcher Richard Tejeda said. “We were just trying to attack the heater as much as possible.”
The cleanup hitter Tejeda, who had missed nearly a month of action with an oblique injury, was a big contributor at the plate going 3-4 with two runs scored and an RBI. He also contributed to the uptick in the Tigers energy during the game.
“It’s everything, momentum is huge for us, and if someone doesn’t bring energy we kind of die,” Tejeda said. “The injury really put things in perspective for me, don’t take this game for granted and play with passion and try to get everyone to play with passion.”
The Tigers jumped from sixth place in the OEC standings to a tie for third place by taking the series from the Dons and remain still in the hunt for a conference championship with six games to go in conference play.
“That’s a big series win, at this time of year really big to win the series,” coach Arguelles said. “We have a saying here ‘We’re not looking for pretty points’ and this win definitely wasn’t pretty, overall we got to be better, we got to be able to execute.”
