Royals place 4th at Pepsi Challenge tournament

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

The Mountain Home Royals won four of six games in the Pepsi Challenge American Legion baseball tournament, finishing in fourth place in the four-day tourney played at Borah and Capital.

Royals 9

Senators 6

A four-run sixth inning helped the Mountain Home Royals to a 9-6 win over the Boise Senators in the opener of the Pepsi Challenge American Legion Baseball Tournament at Borah's Wigle Field.

Both teams scored a run in the first inning, and the Royals took advantage of a couple errors to score two in the third to go up, 3-1. The Senators struck for three in the fourth to take a 4-3 lead.

Mountain Home regained the lead, 5-4, in the top of the fifth, but the Senators regained the lead in the bottom of the inning, 6-5.

The Royals got back-to-back two-run doubles from Jake Hiler and Joe Poseley to build up a 9-6 lead, and Chris Rau shut down the Senators the rest of the way to earn the win.

"It was a great game to be in, with the lead going back and forth," said Royals head coach Mark Cotton after the game. "We had to face some adversity every inning. I think the most notable thing that happened today was our middle infield. We turned a lot of double plays today, which we haven't done a whole lot of them this year, so it's kind of showing some of the progress that they've made, and when you have two freshmen up the middle turning double plays, that's nice. It was a good ball game to be a part of."

Jake Hiler and Brock Morris both had two hits including doubles, Hiler scored three runs and had two RBIs. Joe Poseley had a double and knocked in three runs, Ricky Lee, Chris Rau, Tom Hennessey and Cal Vivier also had hits.

Gabe Anderson pitched into the fourth before Chris Rau took over and finished out the game. Rau earned the win, to improve to 3-3 on the season.

Royals 14

Indians 1

Mountain Home scored seven runs in the third inning on their way to a 14-1 win in five innings over the Nampa Indians Thursday.

Brock Morris had two hits, scored three runs and drove in three runs to lead the Royals. Jake Hiler had a hit and three RBIs. Chris Rau and Eric Christiansen both had hits and two RBIs. Joe Poseley and David Zito both had a hit and RBI, Ricky Lee and Zane Bundy both had a hit and scored two two runs, Shawn Lewis had a hit, and Tom Hennessey had an RBI.

Jake Hiler gave up just two hits while striking out nine to improve to 5-0 on the season.

"Jake (Hiler) kind of picked up where he left off last week," said Coach Cotton in radio comments after the game. "He's really starting to find the zone, coming into his own, pitching-wise. Earlier in the season he was struggling with his location, but he's doing a great job for us right now."

Royals 7

Cannons 2

David Zito tossed a six-hitter and got great defensive support Friday as the Royals beat the Centennial Cannons, 7-2, at Capital High School. Zito helped his cause with an RBI-single at the plate.

Jake Hiler and Joe Poseley had two hits and an RBI, while Ricky Lee, Chris Rau and Eric Christiansen also had hits and RBIs. Cal Vivier also had a hit.

"The first four innings was great," said Coach Cotton after the Centennial win. "We were intense, we were hitting the ball all over the place and playing great defense, and then we kind of lost it there in the last three innings and just kind of stayed on cruise control and maybe should have put those guys away, but there's not too much to complain about.

"David Zito threw a great game today with a very, very small strike zone, and Ricky Lee saved a lot of big innings for them by making some great plays out in centerfield. Jake Hiler stayed hot at the plate. Cal Vivier also played great at second base, so when you can get ground balls and your guys are going to field them and make those outs, life gets a lot easier and it makes the games go quicker and keeps the team in a groove."

The win improved David Zito to 4-1, and the two runs were both unearned. He led the team in strikeouts with 45 in 25 innings of work, and only had one against the Cannons, but credited his defense for their efforts.

"I didn't have my best stuff, so I just tried to keep the ball down in the zone and let my defense back me up, and just kept them off balance the whole game."

Eagle 8

Royals 3

A six-run fourth inning for Eagle was the difference as the Vipers handed the Royals their first loss of the Tournament, 8-3, Friday evening at Capital.

Mountain Home scored a run in the first inning to take a 1-0 lead, and it held up until the fourth when the Vipers got to Royals starter Eric Christiansen for six runs off seven hits.

The Royals got two runs back in the fifth to come within three, 6-3, but could get no closer. Eagle added two runs in the seventh off Brock Morris before Chris Rau came in to shut them down.

"We had a rough fourth inning," said Coach Cotton after the game. "Eric threw very well, we just didn't play defense behind him and he started getting beat up a little bit in the fourth. I probably left him in there a little too long, but it's just one of those things, a good learning experience for me and for everybody. There's definitely things I could have done better, so as a whole, it's one of those things we'll learn from."

The Royals only had six hits in the game, Ricky Lee had two of them. Chris Rau had an RBI-double, Eric Christiansen, David Zito and Gabe Anderson also had hits, Jake Hiler had an RBI. Eric Christiansen dropped to 4-2 on the season with the loss.

Royals 7

Seminoles 6

The Royals had only one tournament game on Saturday as they faced the Boise Seminoles Saturday afternoon at Capital. Mountain Home had 10-runned the Seminoles twice during the regular season, but the Seminoles had played some tough games in the tournament, and they gave the Royals a battle.

Mountain Home scored a run in the first, three in the second, and one more in the third to build up a 5-1 lead. Gabe Anderson pitched well until the fifth, when, helped by errors Boise got to him for four runs before Tom Hennessey came in to end the inning with a strikeout and the game tied at 5-5.

The lead-off batter for the Seminoles reached on a error to start the sixth, and moved to second on a sacrifice. Chris Rau replaced Tom Hennessey on the mound and surrendered an RBI-single by Buddy Ford that gave the Seminoles their first lead of the game, 6-5.

The score stayed that way until the bottom of the seventh, the Royals' last at bat.

Brock Morris singled with one out, and Jake Hiler followed with a double, putting the tying run at third and the winning run at second. The Seminoles changed pitchers and Chris Rau was then walked to load the bases. Joe Poseley drew a walk to score Morris to tie the game at 6-6. Eric Christiansen then followed with a base hit to left field to score Hiler, the Royals winning, 7-6.

"It was definitely a great moment for us as far as the season's gone," said Coach Cotton. "We haven't had any games like that where it came down to the last minute when we've had to have big knocks like that, and who better than Eric, he's been solid for us at the plate all year, and I think the thing that really stood out if you were at the game today is the play of Chris Rau. He really acted like a leader and like an older kid. He played great at third base and came in when we really needed him and just bore down and threw hard and threw a lot of strikes and kept us in the ball game.

"Then, ultimately, in the seventh inning, guys went up there with great approaches and got on base and a big knock by Jake Hiler, and then we pull it out with Eric coming through with that big hit."

Coach Cotton was concerned about the loss of focus defensively that allowed the Seminoles back into the game.

"The biggest problem we have right now is about the fourth and fifth innings we have defensive letdowns, and our defense has just got to be solid throughout the whole game. I honestly believe that if we have solid defense and solid pitching , we're going to win ball games. We're going to put runs on the board, but when our defense lets us down, and obviously we had some base-running errors today, too. Those are little things that are really going to come back to bite you in those kind of games, especially at tournament time. Fortunately, we ended up on the upper hand on it today, and hopefully, we don't have too many close games."

Eric Christiansen and Jake Hiler both had two hits for the Royals, Christiansen had two RBIs, including the game-winner, Hiler had two doubles, scored two runs and had an RBI. Ricky Lee had a two-run single, Brock Morris had a hit and scored twice, and Shawn Lewis also had a hit. Joe Poseley had an RBI. Chris Rau picked up the win in relief, improving to 4-3 on the season.

Baker City 14

Royals 5

Mountain Home and Baker City both finished with a 4-1 record, pitting them against each other for third and fourth place in the tourney on Sunday.

Things looked good for the Royals in the first inning, as they sent 11 batters to the plate, taking advantage of an error, three hit batters and five hits to score five runs and lead, 5-0, after one.

The Diamondbacks then rocked Jake Hiler for four runs on five hits in the Bake City second to cut the Royals lead to 5-4.

Cody Hensley took over on the mound for the Diamondbacks in the second, and pitched the rest of the way, retiring 10 in a row and limiting the Royals to just one hit over the last six innings.

Meanwhile, the Diamondbacks got to Ricky Baker in the fourth inning for five runs, added another run in the fifth, and scored four more in the sixth off David Zito. Tom Hennessey pitched a scoreless seventh for the Royals, but Cody Hensley retired the Royals in order in the seventh to close out a 14-5 Baker City win.

"He's one of the better pitchers we've seen all year," said Coach Cotton in radio comments after the game. "He had good off-speed and a good fastball, but I think where we lost the game today was defensively. We had Ricky Baker come in and he threw ground balls and fly balls and we didn't field them. It definitely was not our best performance of the year. We've got to get a lot better than that if we want to win district, but it's been a long week and we played a lot of games over a short period of time and we definitely came out of here with a lot of positives. You hate to end the tournament getting beat as bad as we did, but that's just kind of the way it worked out. For the most part, I think we played very, very well in the tournament. There's still some things we've got to work on -- just little things -- like covering bases instead of spectating, and things like that. We're going to get better -- this is a good ball club and we've just got to have better performances when we get to tournament time."

Joe Poseley had a two-run double, Chris Rau had a double and an RBI, Gabe Anderson had an RBI-single, Cal Vivier, David Zito and Eric Christiansen also collected hits.

The Royals received a plaque for their fourth-place effort. The Royals were the highest Idaho team to finish in the tournament, as Reno and Richland, Wash., who both went unbeaten, played for the championship. Centennial beat the Bose Seminoles for fifth place.

The loss dropped the Royals to 23-8 for the season. They return to league action this week. They played their final road game of the regular season last night, traveling to Centennial to face the Cannons. They host the Boise Barons for one tonight at 7 p.m., play the Indians in a doubleheader on Friday starting at 5 p.m., and host the Boise Capitals for one Saturday night at 7 p.m. They close out their regular season schedule at home on July 18 against Kuna, playing a doubleheader against the Diamondbacks, starting at 5 p.m. The Area B District Tournament starts July 24 at Timberline Park in Boise.

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