By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
SALEM, Ore.– The Blanchet Catholic baseball team was very efficient on both sides of the ball in their 9-5 victory over Corbett on Saturday afternoon.
By the end of the fifth inning, they led the Cardinals 7-1. The offense scored all seven of their runs during the first three innings of the game while Lakaios Quintero kept his pitch count low with 46 pitches going into the sixth inning.
“That’s my goal every game is to be as efficient as possible and have the least amount of runs scored so my team has an opportunity to let the offense work,” Quintero said. “It’s always easier to pitch when you have the run support and have less to worry about and be in that head space where I can shove.”
“A lot of timely hitting. We got confidence in our entire lineup, but a lot of that goes to the coaches who come up with the game plan and we got the guys who execute. Up and down the order, whether it’s putting down sac-bunts or doing their jobs getting people order,” adds Sam Mosar of the offense.
Mosar, who was the Cavaliers lead-off/number one hitter in Saturday’s game, went 3-for-4 on the day and led a Blanchet offense that produced 13 hits on the day to go with those nine runs. And despite Corbett’s defensive plays in the fourth and fifth innings that helped give the Cardinals an opportunity to comeback, pulling within 7-4 going into the bottom of the sixth, Blanchet used their bats to get some insurance runs late.
With six games left in the season, riding a four-game winning streak coming off their tough 3A Special District 3 series with Taft, Blanchet’s hoping this is the turn they are looking for going into a possible playoff push in a couple of weeks.
“We just need to keep up our offense and keep playing like we can play and we’ll be fine throughout the remainder of season and then we can go into playoffs and do the same thing,” said Quintero.
Quintero finished with four strikeouts in six innings of work. Nate Rauch and Quintero led the offense with 2RBI’s each. Wyatt Moist led Corbett with 2RBI’s and Jeremy Graff and Danny Slevin each had two hits for the Cardinals.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
