Cardinals bats hot against Grizzlies
If Lindsay High School’s bats can stay as hot as they were in their 11-0 romp of Granite Hills at home Wednesday, the Cardinals have a solid chance of making some noise in the East Sequoia League once again.
Not to be overlooked, the shutout was also the second straight for the Cardinals (3-5, 1-0 ESL) after holding Mcfarland (2-4) scoreless in a 4-0 win last week. Lindsay finished second in the ESL last season and host the defending ESL and CIF Central Section Division V champion Sierra Pacific (5-1-1) on Friday at 4 p.m.
“Huge game, they’re really loaded,” LHS head coach Brett Kendig said about the upcoming game. “So we’ve won three in a row now, back-to-back shutouts. So that’s awesome.”
Both the Grizzlies (1-7, 0-1 ESL) and Cardinals have had rough starts to the season but on both sides of the ball Lindsay’s 14-senior team showed they’ve begun to make the adjustments for a promising future while the much younger Granite Hills team will have some “growing pains” over the next couple of weeks, according to GHHS head coach Al Garcia.
One of the seniors leading the Cardinals is catcher Mark Ibarra who hit cleanup and went 4-for-4 with three doubles, three RBIS and two runs scored. Hitting ahead of Ibarra were seniors Isaiah and Ethan Duran, along with freshman Nick Dunning, who made up a loaded top-of-the-lineup. Ethan was 2-for-3 with a double and an RBI while Isaiah had two sacrifice flies for two RBIS and was walked twice before scoring on both of his on-base appearances. Dunning also had a big day, going 2-for3 with two doubles while senior Edgar Silva was the team’s other big hitter behind Ibarra and went 3-for-3 with a double and two RBIS.
“I thought our guys were competing hard, we’re not swinging at bad pitches,” Kendig said. “When we got a chance to make a play, we made a play. We’re making the game easier than what we were doing before. Keeping the game as simple as possible.”
Lindsay had a 2-0 lead after the first inning but broke the game open in the bottom of third with
a four-run inning led off by Isaiah Duran with his first sac-fly of the day. Back-to-back RBIS from Silva and senior Jacob Macias extended the Cardinals lead to 5-0 with just one out. Macias scored the final run of the third inning on a passed ball for a 6-0 lead. Lindsay went on to score two runs in the fourth inning and three in the fifth to put the game out of the Grizzlies reach.
“I didn’t think they were going to hit that well,” GHHS coach Garcia admitted. “They did hit [well]. They hit some doubles, triples and I don’t think we played defensively that bad. They just hit it. Offensively we still got some work to do to keep up with a team like that but those Lindsay boys hit the ball really well and we couldn’t keep up.”
Sophomore Rene Lopez took the loss on the mound for the Grizzlies and went 6 2/3 innings.
Junior Angel Perez got the win on the mound for the Cardinals after going 3 2/3 innings with four strikeouts and giving up two hits. He was relieved by junior Ryan Scheufele who didn’t allow a hit and had five strikeouts. Junior Julio Godoy closed the game for Lindsay in the final inning and struck out two of the four batters he faced. The alljunior pitching rotation will also pitch together on Friday.
“This was a great opportunity for our starter today, Angel Perez,” Kendig said. “This is his fourth or fifth start of the year and I think he’s won his last three ball games. We were lucky, we got him out at 49 pitches so he can come back and throw some Friday...so that worked out beautiful. And then Ryan came in and pitched outstanding. And then our last pitcher, Julio Godoy, is also a junior, and he looked really good. And we’re counting on him to throw some big innings.”