Brandon RowleyThe Santa Ana Dons dropped just their fourth game of the season after blowing a five-run lead to the Golden West Rustlers by a final score of 9-6 on Tuesday afternoon.
The Dons’ offense exploded for five runs in the first inning, but they were unable to score again until the eighth.
“We score big, and then I think everyone starts feeling it’s gonna be easy. We try to chase high, try to cheat and smash one, trying to pad the stats. We have to be disciplined in our at-bats,” said head coach Tom Nilles. “If you have a big lead late and you want to throw away an at-bat, be my guest, but that’s not going to help us win the game.”
Getting out to big, early leads before the offense runs dry has been a common occurrence for the Dons this season. With starting pitcher Josh Rodriguez out with an injury, the Dons’ bullpen game couldn’t hold the Rustlers at bay.
“We know what our offense is capable of. We know we need to get more than five runs for our pitching staff, but that wasn’t the case,” said catcher Carlos Morales. “We’ve blown out so many teams this season where we check out, so we definitely need to work on being more engaged throughout all nine. I feel like that’s the only thing that’s missing for us.”
After 2.2 innings from starter JP Sova, where he only allowed one run, relievers Matthew Solorzano and Bruno Banuelos struggled, allowing eight runs over the next two innings.
Now down 9-5, Santa Ana would hand over duties to left-hander Travis Bergmann, who held Golden West to only two hits through three shutout innings.
“I think that I did a good job of throwing strikes and giving us another chance, and stopping the bleeding,” said Bergmann. “At the end, we didn’t get what we wanted, but we have to move forward.”
Another great pitching performance was put on by Rustlers relief pitcher Cristian Brewster, who shut down the Dons’ offense for four innings, only allowing two hits while tallying seven strikeouts.
“There’s not much else to say,” said Coach Nilles. “The guy threw fastballs by us, we chased, dumped a slider on us for strikes, and threw a couple of quality change-ups. He was just great, man.”
In the seventh and eighth innings, Santa Ana was on the doorstep of breaking the game back open with five batters getting on base, and even having a bases-loaded scenario, but it would amount to only one run for the Dons.
“Yeah, we have to keep playing the same way we’ve been playing all season. We don’t have to change anything,” said Evan Reiter. “We just need to play like we have been. Just keep [scoring] runs, keep playing good defense, pitching well, and it will all go our way.”
The Dons will face off against the Rustlers again on Thursday and Friday, the latter being at home at 1 p.m., and a win in either game clinches the Dons a solo conference title for the first time since 2014.
“It was good to see Bergy and Sova. They threw the ball really well, and hopefully our offense catches fire, and we can win games that way,” said Coach Nilles. “Everything we want is sitting there in front of us. We can take care of our own business, just win a game, but these guys need to stay engaged.”
