The Cerritos College baseball team picked up its seventh win of the year, with a convincing 9-1 win on Feb. 26 over the visiting Glendale Vaqueros.
The Falcons sent sophomore right handed pitcher Jared Robinson to the mound and had a dominant game. Robinson went seven innings, giving up one unearned run on five hits, while striking out seven and walking one.
After the game Robinson talked about his outing, “I felt like I had a good performance. My arm is strong, I stayed under control when things weren’t going my way.”
Although he got seven strikeouts, Robinson was disappointed with himself as he felt he could have tallied a few more. Early on in the game Robinson was a bit erratic, especially with men on base. He hit a batter and threw a wild pitch with a runner on first both times.
Robinson reflected on how he adjusted as the game went along, “I just fell into my groove coming into the third inning, you know the first two innings were like my warm-ups, but once I got into the third inning you know I settled down more, I started finding my strike zone and the results were good.”
He lso had a pretty good day at the dish collecting a hit and a walk. For Robinson, this wasn’t up to his standards but he admits that in his first at-bat he got to get a feel for the pitcher.
“(The Falcons) did really good today, you know. 9-1 ballgame and I feel like we’re going to win conference.”
Several Falcons had big days at the plate. Setting the table was lead-off hitter and sophomore outfielder Johnny Martinez who collected one hit but got on-base three times and scored all three times.
Martinez led off the game with a single up the middle and proceeded to steal second, immediately putting himself into scoring position where he would be driven in two batters later by sophomore infielder Hayden Stevens. Martinez shared his thoughts on the game.
“Well the team did really good today. I feel like we played really well, we’ve been playing pretty strong lately so that’s good and I’ve been playing decent so I’m feeling good about that as well.”
According to Martinez, the fact that the game against Glendale was originally scheduled for Feb. 28, but was rescheduled to avoid a rain-out actually might’ve given the team a boost since they were coming off a road win on Feb. 24 and like playing on back to back occasions like this one.
The Falcons scored their first four runs in the first two innings, then went on a drought until the eighth inning, when freshmen outfielder Kyle Carpenter stepped in with the bases loaded and launched a bases clearing double off the wall in left field, which pretty much put an exclamation point on a great day at the plate for Cerritos. After the game freshmen right handed pitcher Travis Bonner shared his insight.
“We’re doing pretty well. It was just a moved up game to try to hopefully beat the rain and we came out strong, played strong and came out with the win.”
Bonner thinks that the Falcons are catching their stride at the right time as they picked up their third straight win. Bonner concludes by talking about going into conference play.
“Leading into conference now we’re going to surprise some people. We’re coming out to be team that everybody thinks we’re supposed to be.”
Afterward, head baseball coach Ken Gaylord gave his input, “Well you know we pitched good and did some things offensively.”
Gaylord also referenced the fact that the Falcons seemed to hit a low point offensively through the middle innings as they were held scoreless for five straight innings from the third into the eighth, but overall he was pleased with the performance. Gaylord concludes by talking about the Falcons eighth inning rally.
“You know we threw up a bunch in the eighth. We kind of started falling into our bad habits again until the eighth,” Gaylord said.
