Tigers split series with Kavemen

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

The Mountain Home Tiger baseball team won one and lost two last week after splitting a conference series with the Kuna Kavemen.

Borah Lions 13

Mountain Home 3

The Tigers finished off their non-conference schedule against 5A schools, Tuesday, losing to the Borah Lions, 13-3, last Tuesday night at Borah. Six errors hurt the Tigers immensely in that game, which ended early by the 10-run rule.

The Tigers got their three runs in the fourth inning on a three-run home run by Brett Grodi, his second of the season. Grodi's hit was one of just three on the night for the Tigers. Chris Rau and Dave Anderson had the others. Mountain Home used three pitchers on the night, none of whom recorded a strikeout against the Lions. They walked nine batters and hit two.

"They (Borah) have struggled all year, but I didn't really think they were that bad," said Tiger assistant coach Brent Keener.

"It surprised me that they'd only won three games up to that point. I thought they were pretty solid. They have a lot of speed everywhere. They just pretty much schooled us. It was a tough loss, but I think it was an eye opener."

Mountain Home 6

Kuna Kavemen 1

A four-run fifth inning for the Tigers helped them pull away for the 6-1 conference win at Kuna last Thursday.

Michael DesPres scattered five hits and struck out nine in improving to 5-0 on the season. Eight Tigers had hits, led by Jake Hiler with two hits including a triple and two RBIs. Dave Anderson had two hits and an RBI, Alex Hoffman had two hits, one a double, and an RBI. Chris Rau and Brett Grodi both had hits and RBIs, Bret Young had a double and scored two runs, and Aaron Swartz and Michael DesPres also had hits.

"DesPres threw well again, but I thought offensively we hit the ball really solid," said Coach Keener. "We had 11 base hits and even the ones that weren't base hits, guys hit the ball hard."

Kuna Kavemen 3

Mountain Home 1

The Tigers and Kavemen battled in a close one at Mountain Home last Friday, with the Kavemen hanging on for a 3-1 win to earn a conference split.

It was another hard luck outing for Tiger lefty Bret Young, who suffered the loss despite giving up just three hits while striking out six, walking four and hitting two batters.

The Kavemen scored two unearned runs in the first inning without the benefit of a hit to take a 2-0 lead.

Mountain Home's lone run scored on a sacrifice fly by Aaron Swartz in the third inning. The Tigers had the bases loaded with just one out in the bottom of the seventh, but a base running error led to a game-ending double play, the Kavemen's third double play of the night.

"It wasn't a good night," said Coach Keener after the game.

"And it wasn't just the last inning or the last play. I mean (Bret) Young has a guy reach on an error and two walks and they didn't even get a hit and score two runs in the first inning. We weren't ready to play right there. Their pitcher threw strikes, but his stuff wasn't great, we just didn't make any adjustments. I think going into the sixth inning we had six or seven ground balls to the third baseman that weren't hit very hard, just curve balls that we weren't trying to hit the other way."

Bret Young, Michael DesPres and Brett Grodi had Mountain Home's only hits off Kuna pitcher Josh Flowers, who struck out one, walked three and hit two batters, and had great defense behind him.

The loss dropped the Tigers 6-12 on the season, and to 5-7 in league play. With just two league games remaining, Bishop Kelly, 12-0, has rapped up the conference grown, and Skyview, 8-4, has second place rapped up, but the other six teams are all within a game or two of each other, making the final conference series all very important. The Tiger close out their conference play against Nampa this week, hosting the Bulldogs tomorrow (Thursday) and playing at Nampa on Friday.

"Obviously tonight (loss to Kuna) hurt quite a bit, not being able to get back to .500, but we've got to sweep Nampa next week and see what happens," said Keener.

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