The Cerritos College baseball team defeated conference opponent Mt. San Antonio College in a convincing 11-2 win, on March 12.
A bit of sloppy gameplay for Cerritos College throughout the game as they were charged with two errors, but the errors didn’t matter in the end.
Throughout the game, the umpires missed calls for both sides and both teams grew frustrated.
Head coach, Nate Fernley, explained that he didn’t think the umpires weren’t at their best but didn’t think it was personal and thought it was just bad play calling for both teams.
The game started slow for both teams with no runs scored in the first three innings of the contest.
Things didn’t stay quiet as Mt. SAC would be the first team to put a run on the board after an RBI single by Andrew Walters to give the Mounties a 1-0 lead.
The Falcons would answer right back with a sac fly from second baseman, Dylan Immel and an RBI single from outfielder, Diego Orozco that brought in two runs for the Falcons giving them a 3-1 lead which was a much-needed boost on offense.
Mt. SAC would cut the lead down to 3-2 in the fifth inning but with two outs in the bottom of the seventh.
Cerritos went silent for two innings but exploded for eight runs combined in the seventh and eighth innings.
Starting pitcher, Derek Valdez, improved his record to (6-0) on the season as he mowed down the Mounties he allowed only one earned run and pitched eight innings.
The Falcons set the stage for first baseman, Mike Santos, who had the bases loaded and then absolutely crushed a ball.
Santos would go on to hit a massive grand slam to left field and give Cerritos a 7-2 lead.
The hitting became contagious from there as the Falcons’ offense would tally up more runs in the eighth inning.
In the bottom of the eighth Santos came up to bat again and had more left in the tank, as he blasted a two-run home run to end the Falcons’ scoring at 11 runs.
Santos explained what his thought process was after his first few at-bats not being good and how he turned it around quickly.
“I was just tryna help my team win, obviously my first three at-bats were not as planned but I had to make a quick adjustment and you know I had to do my best to get these runs in,” said Santos.
Fernley went on to explain what he thought of the team’s performance and ability of being able to overcome the bad umpiring.
“I thought we did a good job of ignoring that, Coach Knott from Mt. SAC we talked about it at the plate and he said ‘Hey you guys handled bad calls better than we did,’” Fernley said, “I thought we did a good job of handling it and staying with our approach.”
Falcons defeated Mt. SAC again on March 14 tying a 10-game win streak record dating back to 2018 and look to break it on March 16.
