On Saturday, the Roswell Coyotes baseball team hosted a doubleheader against the Alamogordo Tigers to start the season.
The Coyotes are coming off a season in which they went 10-15 and had a managerial change, hiring TC Nusser. The Tigers finished last season with an 11-15 record. They actually played one game before these two, beating Fabens, Texas, 10-0.
The Coyotes started the game quickly, after shutting out the Tigers in the top of the first, scoring three runs in the bottom of the inning. Two of the runs came courtesy of a home run by Elias Lujan (18).
No runs were scored by either team until the fifth inning, when the Coyotes extended their lead to six after scoring three runs. Two of those again scored on a two-run home run, this time by Kian Murray. No teams scored after this, which marked the Coyotes as the winner of game one 6-0.
The Coyotes’ starting pitcher for this game was Jayce Griffin, who pitched a total of five innings, allowing no runs, striking out seven batters and allowing one hit. Joaquin Bolaños entered the game in the sixth and finished the game, allowing no runs, striking one batter out and allowing no hits.
In game two, the Tigers started out as the better team, as on defense, they didn’t allow a run for the first few innings, while their offense added four runs in the first three innings, making the score 4-0 entering the fourth.
The fourth inning was scoreless before the Coyotes scored one run in the fifth to shrink the lead to 4-1 entering the sixth. The Tigers took control after this, outscoring the Coyotes 4-1 the rest of the way to win game two 8-2, splitting the doubleheader.
Their starting pitcher was Kade Kiss (6), who pitched five innings, allowing one hit and one run while striking out 12 batters. His teammates Levi Ramirez (9) and Jaxon Cole (18) combined to finish the game on the mound.
Nusser said his transition to managing the Coyotes has been fun, even though it’s been different from what he was used to, since he was coaching college before this. He has liked what he has seen so far from his team, saying it has a lot of potential and just needs to work on a bunch of little things to reach it.
Roswell (1-1) travels to Alamogordo for a tournament starting Thursday. The first game for the Coyotes will be against Da Vinci out of El Paso, Texas, starting at 3:30 p.m. After this tournament, they return to Roswell to play in the Goddard Southwest Tournament starting on March 12.
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