Taos sweeps Española, Española sweeps Taos
After losing two district games on Saturday (April 2) against Los Alamos, the Taos Tigers have racked up three consecutive wins against district opponents. These are pivotal victories in the schedule, as Taos’ seven remaining games will be within the 4A-2 district. As of now, the Tigers are in second place, behind Los Alamos in the district. In their three-game winning streak, they’ve allowed fewer than five runs each game, while scoring exactly eight runs each time.
On Saturday (April 9), the Tigers played a doubleheader against the Sundevils in Española on a day with few clouds in the sky. Taos had two scoring bursts in the first and fifth inning, enough runs to comfortably win the game. In the second inning, they had a chance to do more damage with runners on first and second base. Dominic Chacon was caught trying to steal third base. The Española catcher threw a pinpoint pass into the third baseman’s glove, and when Chacon slid, the glove was there waiting to tag him.
Starting pitcher Michael Cruz had a strong performance. He had a knack for throwing first-pitch strikes and staying relatively close to the strike zone. In the bottom of
the second inning, he struck out the first batter. The second batter hit a grounder back to Cruz for the easy out. Cruz then gave up a single between the third baseman and the shortstop. He ended the inning with another strikeout.
It took the Sundevils until the fifth inning to score a run. Hunter Tafoya closed out the game with the save.
The second game had a similar score, 8-3, but it came about by different means. Through four innings, Anthony Martinez of Taos and Markus Salazar of Española were battling it out in a pitchers’ duel. The Tigers broke the deadlock in the fifth inning with three runs, and then Española answered right back to tie the game, 3-3. In the top of the seventh inning, the Tigers ran away with it, scoring five
Española pitcher throws a hanger.
runs to win the ball game.
On Wednesday (April 6), the Taos Tigers defeated the Pojoaque Valley Elks by a score of 8-5. Pojoaque jumped out in front with all of their five runs coming in the bottom of the first inning. The speedy Elks — Zach Fresquez, Ethan Naranjo and Tse-Whang Pena — combined for three triples in the ball game.
The Elks held on to the lead until the top of the fifth inning, when the Tigers scored five runs of their own to take control of the game, 6-5. Taos grabbed a threerun cushion in the top of the sixth inning and were able to close out the game 8-5.
Pojoaque’s Fresquez pitched 4.2 innings and gave up 4 earned runs on 11 hits, one of them being a homerun.
Jalen Montano (3-2) got the win for the Tigers. In his 120 pitches thrown, he struck out 15 Elks.