The Santa Rosa Junior College baseball team secured their conference leading 18th win of the season March 19 at Cook Sypher Field, annihilating American River College 11-1 on the back of 7 shutout innings from pitcher Myles Standish.
Following a rough 6-5 loss on March 17 to American River, this became a get-right game for Santa Rosa and they knew it.
“The message was we just had to bounce back with a win. It was a really tough loss there,” left fielder Clay De Mars said. “Our morale was still good though. This was a game we were supposed to win, and we came back. We did exactly what we needed to.”
The Bear Cubs gave up a couple of hits, a hit batter and a passed ball to allow the first run of the game to score in a shaky first inning.
Santa Rosa brought Standish into the game to pitch in the second and he promptly shut the door on American River.
Head coach Damon Neidlinger stressed the importance of a good start after dropping the previous game.
“When you drop the first game, and you have a guy that has Myles’ abilities, you gotta pull that trigger as soon as it doesn’t look right. He’s gotta be in the game and you saw why,” Neidlinger said.
Standish pitched 7 shutout innings, allowing only 2 hits and racking up 8 strikeouts, 7 swinging.
The defense behind Standish was airtight, making one big play after another and helping him keep his momentum rolling.
“I know we have probably one of the best defenses in the nation. So, you know, I trust my guys every single time,” Standish said.
All his pitches were clicking, leaving American River with no answer. They constantly found themselves down in the count attempting to guess pitches to no avail.
“You gotta get ahead. That’s the number one rule,” Standish said. “Get ahead of every single batter. So that’s what I was trying to do.”
As the Bear Cubs’ pitching took over the game, the bats finally came to life in the bottom of the fourth inning when Santa Rosa batted around putting up a 6-spot. They added another run in the fifth and put the capper on the game in the seventh on a three-run homer hit by De Mars.
“I knew it was gone. I was just looking for that pitch and it came in. I saw it and I just hit it,” De Mars said. He finished 2-4 on the day knocking in five runs.
Santa Rosa tacked on one more run in the eighth inning before pitcher Blake Bryson came in to throw the final frame of the game, getting a pair of strikeouts to seal the win.
Looking forward, Neidlinger hopes they can build on this win with more consistency from the jump.
“Just finding their consistency, and energy in our offensive attack,” Neidlinger said as he reflected on their early game struggles. “I mean, it’s just that simple, just showing up like it was in that fourth inning, and not looking like they have to take the first at-bat to kind of figure out what’s going on. And a little bit of that is just mental readiness.”
Despite the slow start, Santa Rosa bounced back to play a complete game putting on an impressive display in every area of the field.
“I think today, we just fired on all cylinders,” said catcher Justice Brinson. “Our pitching was lights out. And then our bats were on fire today. And we haven’t necessarily put both sides of the game together too much this year, but today we really did and it really showed.”
