Mt. SAC Baseball took care of business, defending Mazmanian Field on Thursday, April 12, with a huge 13-5 home win versus Compton College.
Entering the game, the Mounties were looking to rack up another winning streak after dropping a game early this month.
With their offense dominating their last two games, Mt. SAC had just beaten Compton, 15-2 on the road on April 10, and were hoping to do the same again at home.
The Mounties offense struggled during the first inning and were not able to capitalize when they had the bases loaded in the third. However, the defense took a stand and did not allow any runs, until the second inning, when Compton’s Julian Sansores hit a two run homer.
Trailing 0-2, the Mounties finally struck back in the bottom of the sixth inning when Dino Miranda singled towards the center field, allowing Ray Mata-Lemos to score a run.
“It was just to kind of to spark us, [Miranda] has been one of our regulars. I just wanted a quality at bat at that point,” Mounties’ head coach John Knott said. “He’s s guy that can hit the ball in the gap and it was just nice to finally give us a little bit of breathing room, and he really struck that ball well.”
Brandon Bradshaw later scored from third base on a passed ball and from there, the floodgates opened on Compton as Elijah Zaragoza singled, getting Miranda to home plate and Quinn Cotter onto second base. This set up Elijah Greene, who doubled to centerfield, bringing in Cotter to score.
Zaragoza then reached home on a single from Anthony Walters, while Ryon Knowles brought Greene home on a single of his own.
With Walters scoring off a wild pitch, the Tartars found themselves in a deep 7-2 hole.. The Mounties added three more runs in the inning before finally being shut down on a pop up ball by Greene to shortstop for the third out.
At the top of the seventh inning, Compton tried to answer back with a huge three run double off Billy Sanchez that cut Mt. SAC’s lead in half, 10-5.
However, the Mounties answer back with an insurance run in the bottom of the seventh, when Walters scored from third base on a Nic Sandoval ground out.
The top of the eighth remained scoreless for Compton while the Mounties added two runs in the bottom of the inning when Kyle Koontz doubled, bringing Zaragoza and Manny Galvan home.
“We wanted to put as much pressure on these guys as possible and I thought Compton did a great job in setting the tone,” Knott said after the game. “We couldn’t get anything going; [Compton] turned a bunch of double plays, you could feel like there were some nerves from our end of it, and I thought our guys that came off the bench led by Dino Miranda just did an excellent job of sparking our team.”
“I just knew that I had to hit something good, nice and easy like coach says just stay calm,” Miranda said. “It means a lot to us because it helps us keep the ball rolling going into next week”
With this win, the first place Mounties improve to 25-9 overall and 13-3 in their conference. They will open up the first of their final two series of the regular season against Rio Hondo in an away game on Tuesday, April 17 at 2:30 p.m. before returning home on Thursday, April 19.