JV Breaks Even in Weekend Road Games

Friday night, 3/18 , JV visited San Rafael for their second MCAL contest of the year and cruised to a 10-2 victory over the Bulldogs. Redwood played stalwart defense behind pitchers Blake Cusick, who picked up the win with four strong innings, and Tyler Warren, who finished up with three innings of solid relief. Each pitcher allowed just two hits and one run by San Rafael. Meanwhile, Redwood’s offense took advantage of a shaky first inning by the Bulldog’s starting pitcher, who walked in a couple of runs. Redwood added 7 hits from five different players. Mackie Skall and Dane Goodman had two hits apiece, and Noah Arrick, Luke Zlatunich and Josh Katz rounded it out. Redwood also took five errors by San Rafael. Oliver Pearson, Arrick (2), Goodman (2), Skall (2), Drew Jacks, Alex Smith and Sean McKenna all crossed the plate for the Giants, who are now 2-0 in league play.

Michael Connors, backed up by Dane Goodman, prepares to catch a fly ball in the third inning.

3/19. Saturday morning in Santa Rosa was a different story, when Redwood lost 5-1 at Cardinal Newman in a revenge game for the redbirds. Things started off well in the first inning, when Oliver Pearson hit a single and later scored as a result of an error by the Cardinals. But that was all the scoring the Giants could muster on the day, as CN played very solid defense the rest of the way and limited the Giants to just five more hits, no walks and no more runs. While the Giants’ hitters hit the ball hard a number of times, almost all of those hard hit balls were right at CN defenders and Redwood had no extra base hits on the day. Blake Cusick led the Giants hitting on Saturday with two singles, and Noah Arrick, Drew Jacks and Nicolas Paoli-Khadjenouri contributed a single each. Pitcher James Thomson started the game and took the loss after tossing 4 innings and giving up 5 runs, 3 of which were earned, on 7 hits. Oliver Pearson, who earned a win against CN a couple of weeks ago at home, held the Cardinals scoreless on just one hit in his two innings of work but the Redwood bats could not cut into the early deficit. The Cardinals are a well-coached team that executed at the plate very well. In total, they managed to put together eight hits (including a homer in the third inning), two walks and two stolen bases for their five runs.