The Los Medanos College baseball got back to .500 on the season with a 12-7 home victory against Monterey Peninsula College on Thursday, Feb. 1.
Mustangs starting pitcher Rocco Borrelli had another strong all-around performance for the ball club. He completed seven innings on the mound, struck out 10 batters, and surrendered just two runs on the day.
“He’s just attacking hitters and attacking the zone,” Mustangs head coach Harmen Sidhu said. “I think we started incorporating more pitches this time. I think with the pressure on, that’s when we start pitching better.”
Borrelli also tallied two hits and four RBIs in three at-bats.
Sidhu said Borrelli’s first two innings on the mound helped the team settle in and jump ahead early. Borrelli struck out five of the first six Lobos batters before the Mustang offense exploded for six runs in the bottom of the second inning.
“Momentum is huge,” Sidhu said. “When confidence is high for everybody, you do good things. That’s the number one thing as long as everybody’s feeling good, having fun and that’s when good things happen.”
Borrelli was able to set into a groove with the six-run cushion. He walked three batters in the fourth inning that resulted in two runs for the Lobos. Monterey Peninsula was retired in every inning except for the fourth while Borrelli was on the mound.
Throughout the game, Sidhu voiced his displeasure about balks not being called against the Monterey Peninsula pitchers during their pickoff attempts. Sidhu walked out of the dugout to talk to the home plate umpire after the sixth inning when Mustangs outfielder Chase Taylor was picked off at first base.
“I would just ask him what he sees because I see something a little bit different,” Sidhu said. “It was just collaborating on what we see because everybody sees things differently.”
Sidhu added that he believed he saw movement in the Lobo’s front leg before making a pick-off move.
The Mustangs held a commanding 12-3 lead entering the ninth inning until reliever Noah Tofan surrendered four runs before getting the final three outs of the game. He said the decision to leave Tofan on the mound was to see him fight through adversity in the final inning.
“I’m gonna need some of these pitchers to pitch,” Sidhu said. “Sometimes you have to go through a little bit of adversity in order to grow. And that’s okay because if you don’t face adversity at times, then you won’t be able to progress in your career. When things get hard you have to step up sometimes. I can’t just let you just get out of it, you have to get out of it yourself at first.”
The Mustangs are back to .500 on the season and sit just half of a game back of conference-leading Marin College in the Bay Valley Conference.
