Royals sweep two doubleheaders following break

The Mountain Home Royals returned to action after two weeks off and swept doubleheaders from the Centennial Cannons and Kuna Diamondbacks in Class A American Legion baseball.

Royals 10, Cannons 9

Royals 11, Cannons 1

The Mountain Home Royals played their final home games of the season Friday night, taking two league games from the Centennial Cannons.

In the first game, the Royals struck for seven runs in the first innings on just two hits, but then let the Cannons back in the game as Centennial battled back from an 8-3 deficit to score three in the top of the seventh and go ahead 9-8.

Not to be outdone, the Royals battled back, starting in the bottom of the seventh with four straight hits, Adrian Martinez' single scored Jake Hennessey to tie it and Zach Peterson's single scored Martinez with the winning run, as the Royals won 10-9.

Jesse Cobos and Bailey Miller both had two hits and an RBI in the first game. Danny Brescia and John Kennison had RBI doubles, Jake Hennessey, a triple, and Adrian Martinez and Zach Peterson each had RBI-singles.

Skylar Quintal took over the pitching duties from Levi Abrahamson in the sixth inning with an 8-3 lead, and gave up six runs, just one of them earned, to blow the save opportunity, but ended up recording the win to improve to 5-1.

Adrian Martinez set the Cannons down on one hit through five innings in the nightcap, striking out six and improving to 4-1 on the season as the Royals won 11-1.

He also had a double and drove in four runs. Skylar Quintal, Jake Hennessey, Edy Mesillas and John Kennison each had a hit and RBI and Mesillas had a double. Tyler McCall also had a hit and scored two runs, while Danny Brescia scored twice and drove in one run.

Royals 18, Kuna 9

Royals 16, Kuna 8

The Royals had a couple wild games at Kuna Saturday, but had big innings in both ball games to battle back and sweep the Diamondbacks.

In the first game, Mountain Home scored six runs in the first inning and increased its lead to 8-1 heading into the bottom of the second.

The Diamondbacks took advantage of three walks, three errors and a couple of hits to plate seven runs in the bottom of the inning to tie the game at 8-8.

Kuna took the lead, 9-8, in the third inning, but the Royals tied it at 9-9 in the fourth and took the lead, 10-9, in the fifth.

Mountain Home put the game out of reach in the sixth, scoring seven runs, four of them coming on a grand slam home run by Jake Hennessey. The squad added another run in the seventh to make it an 18-9 final.

The Royals pounded out 15 hits in the first game, three of them by Jake Hennessey, who had a double and triple besides his home run. He had five RBIs and scored four runs.

Jesse Cobos had three hits, including a double, and drove in two runs. Danny Brescia, Zach Peterson and Teddy Reaume each had two hits.Brescia had a double and two RBIs and Peterson had two RBIs. John Kennison had a two-run double.

Skylar Quintal pitched five innings of four-hit ball, striking out six, and picked up the win, improving to 6-1 on the season.

In the second game of the double-header, the Diamondbacks got to Royals starter John Kennison for six runs in the first inning and led 7-0 after two. Kennison then settled down on the mound and a 12-run third inning put the game out of reach, as the Royals went on to win, 16-8, to get the sweep.

"I'm impressed with the guys," said Royals head coach and manager Alex Hoffman.

"It's not perfect, but we haven't played ball like that for awhile, and we were out of our comfort zone, I'd say, but everybody came out to hit today and based on what we saw last night, for the most part, we saw a good ball club here today and made the adjustments that we needed to make and took two."

The Royals pounded out 14 hits in the second game, Adrian Martinez getting five of them, including a triple and four RBIs. Danny Brescia, Zach Peterson, Jesse Cobos and Teddy Reaume all had two hits.

Cobos had a home run and drove in four runs, Peterson drove in two and Reaume one. Jake Hennessey had an RBI-double and scored three runs.

John Kennison pitched six innings to get the win and improve to 4-1. Adrian Martinez pitched a scoreless seventh inning, striking out the side.

The wins improved the Royals to 14-1 in league play, and 24-4 overall. They played a non-league game at Columbia Monday night, and close out their regular season schedule Friday at Timberline Park against the Boise Gems with a doubleheader, the first game starting at 4 p.m.