Anyone who knows baseball knows that it’s a game of failure. A batter who makes an out seven out of 10 times is considered a good hitter. The subtle nuances of how a batter or fielder fails, though—those little fundamental things—frequently make a difference.
On Wednesday afternoon (March 26), the Wilcox Chargers baseball team lost 11-7 to its league rival Palo Alto Vikings, but it wasn’t because the Vikings showed superior skills. Wilcox struggled in this one with a lack of fundamental execution.
Conversely, Palo Alto executed the little things well from start to finish. In the bottom of the first inning, the Vikings immediately converted a leadoff double into a run, even without another batter reaching base.
A simple sacrifice bunt moved the runner to third, and then a sacrifice fly brought the runner home.
The Chargers, to the team’s credit, hung tough the entire game despite trailing throughout. Immediately after the Vikings opened the scoring with impressive small-ball execution, the Chargers tied things up on the strength of singles from Kohei Jumonji and Matty Tiendas.
Unfortunately for the Wilcox supporters in attendance, the tie didn’t last long.
In the bottom of the second, the Chargers essentially gave the game away. A four-pitch walk, a balk, an error on a double-play attempt and an error on a double-steal play all contributed to what was a six-run inning for the Vikings.
Sure, the Vikings hit the ball well a couple of times, but take away the self-inflicted mistakes, cleaner baseball in that inning probably limits the damage to only two or three runs.
“We had a really clean practice the day before,” remarked Tiendas. “But on the defensive side today, it was really uncharacteristic of us to give up two errors.”
“The errors in big situations didn’t help,” added first baseman Jake Prettol. “But we did a good job staying upbeat. We always keep the dugout up even when we are down because anything could happen.”
And “anything” almost did happen. After falling behind 9-2, the Chargers offense took advantage of some mistakes by the Vikings for a four-run rally in the top of the fifth.
Justin Forster got things started by drawing a walk while Diego Prado and Dylan Jackson singled to load the bases. Jumonji picked up an RBI via a walk to inch the Chargers closer at 9-3.
Samuel Martinez picked up an RBI the hard way by getting hit by a pitch and then it was 9-4. Tiendas then smoked a line drive that knocked in one run while a second run came in on an error in the outfield, just like that, the Chargers were back in the game at 9-6.
From that point on, though, the game calmed down on both sides. After a combined 15 runs through 4.5 innings, the teams combined for just three runs over the final 2.5 innings.
Wilcox can’t pin the loss on not enough strikeouts from pitchers nor not enough hits from batters. The loss was on not playing clean baseball over the first four innings.
The Chargers also lost to the Vikings on Friday by a score of 6-5.
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