Tigers open with losses to 5A schools

The Mountain Home Tigers had their problems with 5A power teams Meridian and Timberline last week, losing to both.

Meridian 11

Mountain Home 0

The Mountain Home Tigers hosted Meridian in their season opening baseball game at home last Thursday, getting blanked 11-0.

The Warriors broke open a scoreless game in the third inning, scoring four runs, and added three more in the fourth.

Four Meridian pitchers shut the Tigers down on just two hits, a first inning single by Daniel Kaiser, and a seventh-inning single by Dillon Barresi.

Daniel Kaiser suffered the loss on the mound, tagged for seven runs in 3 1/3 innings of work. Michael Hobgood worked three innings, giving up four runs, and Jacob Dunn recorded the final two outs in the seventh.

"Obviously, we're disappointed with the score, but I don't think there's any change in my thoughts on this team from the beginning of the season until now," said Tiger baseball coach Travis DeVore. "We showed early in the game that we were a little bit timid with the bats. I think that's one thing we improved in the course of the game, and I thought we faced some pretty quality pitching -- a lot better pitching than we saw last Saturday at the Jamboree. So in terms of getting better, I thought that during the course of the game we did, but that doesn't mean we don't have a long ways to go."

Timberline 16

Mountain Home 6

The Timberline Wolves scored 15 runs in two innings to blow open a close game and beat the Tigers in five innings at Timberline Friday.

Mountain Home scored two runs in the second to take a 3-1 lead, and added another run in the fourth to lead 4-1, but the bottom fell out for the Tigers in the bottom of the fourth.

After striking out the lead-off batter, Tiger hurler Brian Fields then walked three straight to load the bases.

A bloop single by Chad Bleazard plated one run, and a throwing error on a ground-out, plated two more. Before the inning was over, the Wolves had scored eight runs to take a 9-4 lead.

Mountain Home got two of the runs back in the top of the fifth, but between errors -- the Tigers had seven for the game -- and timely hits, Timberline scored seven more runs in the fifth, with Matt Cliff's two-run single ending the game by the 10-run rule, 16-6.

"We absolutely gave them the game," said Coach DeVore after the game. "You look at that fourth inning -- eight runs on just a couple of hits. Our defense made a couple of errors and they held their heads. That's a classic case of of an immature team -- not thinking they can get it done when the next ball's hit to them -- but that's why we play the games, to decide who's out there and who can keep their heads up through a little bit of adversity.

"We made a couple of critical errors, and guys that aren't used to being the ones to rally the troops, they let us down. They were feeling sorry for themselves, and they're young kids and that's easy to do, and I don't blame any of them personally, but as a team, we need to make sure that never happens again, because we're a lot better team than what we showed the last two innings."

Daniel Kaiser, Dillon Barresi, David Wise and David Pacheco had hits for the Tigers -- Pacheco's was a double. Daniel Kaiser had two RBIs, and Dillon Barresi had one.

Tiger junior Brian Fields suffered the loss, going 3 1/3 innings. He was relieved by Andrew Grodi in the fourth, and Grodi gave way to Michael Despres in the fifth.

"I thought Fields threw awesome, and the other two pitchers threw well,' said DeVore. "I just can't say enough" about them.

"We are an immature team in terms of having experience at the varsity level and having roles for guys to be leaders and step up for us. Hopefully that will come with experience."

The Tigers hosted the Capital Eagles yesterday (Tuesday), and play at Mountain View tomorrow (Thursday).