Two bad innings doom young Warriors

For five of the innings in its game against Borrego Springs, the young San Pasqual baseball team held its own.

But two of the innings are what doomed the Warriors, and they lost 17-5 to the Rams in the championship game of the Warrior Invitational on Saturday afternoon.

The Rams, who beat the Warriors 20-6 earlier in the day, scored all of their runs in three innings — including seven-run second and seventh innings.

“It was like a Jekyll and Hyde thing. There were times where we looked horrible and at times we looked great,” San Pasqual coach Faron Owl said. “It's about keep plugging away — don't put your heads down. We're still in the beginning of our season here.”

“We start slow and we have a young team so we don't know how to finish, but we're getting there,” said Warrior senior Andrew Lomaintewa, who took the loss on the mound but went 2 for 4 at the plate. “We have those moments when we look really good and can keep up with them.”

Facing what Owl called the fastest pitcher of the year thus far in Borrego Springs sophomore Cameron Dice, the Warrior bats finished with nine hits on the day. Lomaintewa, freshman Luis Castaneda and freshman Deion Twist each finished with two hits for the Warriors.

“The guys adjusted well and choked up on the bat and just went after it,” Owl said. “Even the younger guys were hitting today and they had to change their philosophy — shorten it up and try to make something happen. I'm proud of the guys of how they played today.”

“We have a lot of freshman and sophomores so they haven't seen much pitching at all,” Lomaintewa said. “This is the first time they faced a guy who can actually throw hard, so it was just a matter of them choking up and following through.”

Dice finished the day striking 11 Warriors.

Freshman Andrew Limones pitched 4 1/3 innings of relief and only faced three hitters in three of those innings, including a pair of dramatic plays on defense. In the top of the fourth, Ram sophomore Gunner Van Sickle doubled to right-center with one out. The following batter hit a sharp line drive back and Limones, who instinctively caught it and turned to double Van Sickle off second base to end the inning. In the following inning, David Martinez hit a pop-up in foul territory near the San Pasqual dugout and Limones sprinted to make the catch before he rolled to the ground.

“In practice my coach always tells me to dive and see what happens, and I dove and barely caught it,” said Limones, who picked off a runner at first base to end the sixth inning.

“He worked his butt off,” Owl said of Limones. “You can see he wants every pitch, he wants every ball, and that's the kind of player you want.”

However, the innings that the Warriors had errors in proved to be too costly. They made three errors in the Rams' seven-run second inning, three errors in a three-run fifth and two errors in a seven-run seventh.

“At this level, errors are going to eat you up,” Owl said. “And that's what happened today.”