District Baseball enters next to last week of games

The West Orange Stark Mustangs are looking for their first win in district this season, but played a good game against the Silsbee Tigers on Tuesday, April 11, at Ronnie Anderson Park. Silsbee prevailed 11-5 over the Mustangs.

The weather had an effect on the game. Officials called weather delays three separate times because of lightning strikes in the vicinity or actual precipitation falling down.

The Mustangs started Diego Ibarra on the mound. The freshman left-hander retired the first seven Tiger batters he faced striking out four of them. Ibarra had to pitch through the worst of the weather with the delays disrupting his rhythm and then he threw in a steady downpour during the third inning when Silsbee scored its first six runs.

The Tigers took a 7-0 lead adding a run in the top of the fourth off of Ibarra. West Orange Stark staged a rally in the bottom half of the same inning. Tyrone Wilson reached on a single to get things started. Ibarra walked before both courtesy runner Cortez Robertson and Wilson advanced a base on a wild pitch.

With one out Noah Robles walked to load the bases with Mustangs. Grayson Gregory sliced a hit to left field that rolled all the way to the fence driving in all three runners. Silsbee turned a soft liner to first base into a double play to limit the Mustangs' damage to three runs.

West Orange Stark scored without the benefit of a hit in the sixth. Robles walked for the second time, advanced to second on a ground out, and eventually came home on two wild pitches to make the score 7-4 in favor of Silsbee.

Gregory replaced Ibarra on the mound for the Mustangs in the fifth inning and retired six of the first seven Tigers he faced. Silsbee got to Gregory for four runs on four hits in the seventh to open up an 11-4 lead.

The Mustangs did not go quietly into the night. Christian Anderson bunted for a base hit and Will Lee reached on a Tiger error. Tyrone Wilson hit a bullet to centerfield but right at the Silsbee outfielder for the first out.

Anderson scored on a wild pitch to narrow the gap to 11-5 for the Mustangs. Ibarra and Andrew Wilson walked to load the bases with one out but no further scoring occurred in the seventh.

Coach Sergio Espinal commented that his Mustangs are battling every game. "We've been playing pretty tough. We've just haven't gotten the right breaks at times, and we've kind of fallen apart in one inning that kills us. I think once we learn how to handle adversity we should be okay," Espinal explained.

The Mustangs and the Tigers played again on Friday, April 14, at Silsbee. The Tigers won 11-0 over WOS with Tiger pitcher Taylor Wise throwing a perfect game during the shortened five innings because of the 10-run rule being invoked.

The Bridge City Cardinals split their two games last week with the Lumberton Raiders. The two teams both won on their home fields.

The Raiders won on Tuesday at Lumberton scoring nine runs in the first two innings and taking the victory 11-1 in five innings. The Cardinals used five pitchers in the loss.

On Friday at Chuck Young Field in Bridge City pitcher Braylen Collins was the star with his arm and his bat. Collins struck out eight Raiders and limited them to one run to get the 8-1 win on the mound for the Cardinals. He also hit a three-run double to spark the offense.

A split in two games is what Little Cypress Mauriceville did in its two games with Jasper this past week. In their games the road team won each contest.

The Bears got a strong pitching performance from starter Dean Reynolds who got the win 4-3 in Jasper with Landon Richards picking up a save in relief. Clay Raney reached base three times and drove in a run. LCM's Marco Bandiero and Justin McCarver both had two hits in Tuesday's game at Jasper.

The second game was played on Friday at Don Gibbens Field on the LCM campus and the Bears took the initial lead with a run in the first inning. The Bulldogs got a two-run homer in the top of the second to grab the lead briefly but the Bears scored again to tie the game 2-2 in the bottom half of that inning.

Pitchers Parker Seago and Landon Richards of the Bears combined to shutout Jasper over the next five innings. Unfortunately, the Bulldogs took advantage of three Bear errors in the top of the eighth to score five runs to win the game 7-2 to gain the split in the two games.

Little Cypress Mauriceville (2-6) plays West Orange Stark (0-8) this week. Tuesday's game between the Bears and the Mustangs was played at Don Gibbens Field on the LCM campus and Friday's game will be at Ronnie Anderson Park on the WOS campus.

The Bridge City Cardinals (5-3) face the Jasper Bulldogs (4-4) twice. Tuesday's game was at Chuck Young Field and on Friday the two teams travel to Jasper to play.