The Cerritos Falcons baseball team came away with their third win of the season on Feb. 5, defeating the visiting Ventura Pirates by a final of 6-4.

The Falcons got off to a hot start scoring four runs in the first three innings. The score would remain at 4-0 until the fifth when Ventura put three on the board with a little help from the Falcons defense.

In that fifth inning Falcons’ sophomore starter Kyle Carpenter gave up back-to-back singles to lead off the inning. The next batter proceeded to lay down a sacrifice bunt that was fielded cleanly by Carpenter, but instead of taking the sure out at first, he looked to third to try and realized he had no play.

By the time he shifted his attention to first he realized he had no play there as well and this extra out that the Pirates were granted proved to be crucial as they went on to cap the inning off with a two out two run double that would’ve been possible had it not been for the mental lapse committed by Carpenter.

Head baseball coach Ken Gaylord is happy his team came away with a win, but felt that his troops made too many mental mistakes.

“We got the win, but we broke down like six times on things that we work on that went out the window. That bothers me and concerns me.”

Gaylord explained that the reason Carpenter was shaky at best is because one of the fingers on his throwing hand was bothering him, but he also felt that his ace didn’t do enough to help himself out.

Injured or not, Carpenter constantly found himself in trouble on the mound. For all it’s worth Carpenter threw 97 pitches, but didn’t last the required five innings to pick up the win.

Sophomore reliever George Mendoza came in to record the last out of the fifth, which earned him his first win of the year. Mendoza went on to toss three and a third innings of shutout baseball, while collecting three punch outs and hitting three batters.

Freshmen reliever Jerald Johnston came on to record his first save of the year despite giving up two hits that were quickly erased by a game ending double play.

Gaylord talked about the effort put forth by his bullpen, “I think George threw well. It’s going to be a work in progress, but I think we’re getting better.”

It was clear that Carpenter wasn’t on his A game on this day, but the Falcons were able to score enough runs for their ailing mate on the mound.

Sophomore reliever Travis Bonner believes the Falcons did a nice job of situational hitting to put the Pirates away when they were threatening to come back.

Bonner talked about how the Falcons kept fighting despite making several mental lapses, specifically the one in the fifth.

“I just think that we made mental mistakes right there, but as we showed later in the game we bounced back and we held them to four runs.”

Bonner isn’t the only Falcon that believes the hitting is what made the difference in the game.

Fellow freshmen reliever Adrian Ramirez believes the hot bats offset the mental mistakes and inconsistent pitching.

“The bats were pretty good we put up some pretty good at-bats, (but) pitching got a little sloppy with the walks and hit by pitches, but we held it down offensively.”

Ramirez, like his coach, liked what he saw out of the bullpen as he thought they were hitting their spots and inducing ground balls and fly balls alike.

Next up the Falcons look to continue their winning ways against Santa Ana College on Feb. 7 at noon at Kincaid Field.