After a week off to rest and recuperate as well as practice, the Cerritos College baseball team started a new week with two consecutive games against Santa Ana College, one in Santa Ana and the other in Cerritos.
With the series split, Cerritos is now 5-2 overall.
The Falcons’ three-game winning streak was snapped on Tuesday, Feb. 16, at Don Sneddon Field at Santa Ana College as the Dons scored six runs in the first inning.
Cerritos did come back to take the lead briefly in the top of the sixth with seven runs on four hits and a hit batsman.
Two of those hits were two-run doubles by Gary James and Kenton McDonald.
Santa Ana however, came back in its half of the inning to tie the game on a base hit and then took the lead on a squeeze play.
The biggest inning for the Dons was the bottom of the seventh as Falcon pitcher Adrian Ramirez walked three batters, one of which was a hit batsman, to eventually score a run with the bases loaded.
After Cerritos got two outs, the Dons put the game out of reach with a grand slam off the bat of Austin Pritchard.
“[Ramirez] threw a fastball and I had my target location mixed up with where he wanted to throw it. Our pitchers can’t be scared, we know we can compete with [Santa Ana] and we need to up the intensity,” James said.
Santa Ana would tack on two more runs in the bottom of the eighth to take the game 16-8.
McDonald said, “Everyone makes mistakes. We have to learn from the mistakes we made, and the pitchers need to pick up their game while we execute on our chances.”
Thursday, Feb. 18, was a different story as the team was able to learn from Tuesday’s loss and take advantage of chances and come away with a 3-2 victory at Kincaid Field.
The Dons did score first however, with a 2-run double in the top of the second.
“In baseball, you have to have good short-term memory since you play almost every day. We came prepared, learned from our mistakes in Tuesday’s loss, and we had some great pitching,” first baseman Mike Heenan said.
Cerritos got on the board in the bottom of the third when Jonathan Avila smacked a solo home run to left-center field.
“I thought I put a good swing on [the ball]. I missed a couple pitches, but finally I got one that I wanted and it was a good pitch to hit, and I crushed it over the fence,” Avila said.
The Falcons took the lead in the bottom of the fourth inning after Derrick Edwards hit a sacrifice fly to knock in Fermin Beza and tie the game at two.
Heenan then looped a single through the gap in right field to score Daniel Lopez, which was the go-ahead run, and advanced to second on a throwing error by the Dons’ pitcher Guillermo Sanchez.
The pitchers took the game the rest of the way.
The Falcons will travel out to Palomar College on Saturday, Feb. 20.
Game time is 2 p.m.
