Coming off a 6-0 shutout loss in their first game of the season, the Cerritos College Falcons baseball team returned home on Jan. 24 and walked-off against the Mt. San Jacinto College Eagles with a final score of 5-4 to split the short series.
“Big team win. There’s still so much room for us to grow, but I think we take this [and] build from here,” Cuellar said.
Sophomore Brody Cuellar came up to bat for the Falcons with one out and the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth. With the infield playing in, he hit a ground ball to the second baseman and forced the Eagles defense to make a throw to home plate which resulted in an errant throw, allowing the winning run to score.
Falcons head coach Nate Fernley said, “I thought we played well enough to win. I don’t think that was our best game.”
The Falcons, who were shutout by the Eagles and mustered only three hits on Friday, were held hitless for their first 2 2/3 innings until second baseman Zee Gutierrez’s single to left field.
Gutierrez came up to bat with one out in the bottom of the ninth and walked. A walk and a hit by pitch by the following batters set up the ninth inning comeback for Cuellar and the Falcons.
“We had some issues with the bunt defense which normally we’re pretty good at, our approach wasn’t very good at the plate and I thought we pitched well,” Fernley added. “AJ had a struggle there but Mateo came in and kind of closed that door and we found a way to win.”
Sophomore pitcher AJ Gonzalez entered the game in the top of the eighth with the game tied 4-4 before loading the bases and handing the ball to Mateo Heredia who got out of late inning trouble without allowing a runner to score.
Heredia pitched the final two innings in relief without allowing a hit and struck out three batters.
“My mentality on the mound was to just pump strikes, get as many outs as I can,” Heredia said. “But I just had to punch strikes and just do my job.”
Cuellar finished going 2-for-5, including his sixth inning two-run triple that gave Cerritos a 4-2 lead. Catcher Jose Perez went 2-for-4 with a walk, a stolen base and two runs scored.
As a collective, the Falcons offense managed eight hits in 33 ABs with four walks and six strikeouts.
Cuellar referenced the team’s pitch selections as one of the things they are still working out as a team, echoing the head coach’s statement about the team’s approach at the plate.
“Just little things like that. Playing baseball better than the other team because we have all the talent and everyone wants it. So, it just comes down to playing better baseball,” he added.
The pitching side allowed nine hits, struck out six, walked two and allowed four runs with two of them being earned and an error by the Falcons defense in the top of the fifth that followed with the Eagles taking the lead proved insignificant as the Falcons came back to win.
Starting pitcher Logan Hunt provided five solid innings for the Falcons allowing two runs, both unearned. Sophomore Jake Fowler came on in relief and pitched two scoreless innings with two strikeouts.
Heredia said, “We came into the game [with] really high energy. We know what we had to do. We had to come in and, definitely, for sure get a win, but with yesterday’s loss, it kind of gave us that reality check that we need to actually hone in and lock and we did that today.”
The Falcons baseball team improved their early season record to 1-1 and will travel to Stockton, California where they will face San Joaquin Delta College for a three-game series beginning Jan. 29.
Fernley, on the team’s outlook, said, “We get to work. By far not our best baseball. We’ll take the win, coming out of the weekend 1-1 is a gift by how we played. So, we get to work Monday and Tuesday and then we’re on a bus up to Delta and play three there.”
“So, turnaround’s pretty quick, but got a couple of days here to work out some kinks,” he added.
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