The Santa Rosa Junior College baseball team racked up 18 hits and three home runs in a lopsided 14-2 win over the College of the Sequoias on April 1 to kick off their three-game home series at Cook Sypher Field.
The Big 8 conference-leading Bear Cubs (24-7) squared up against a hot non-conference foe in the Sequoias amidst a nine-game winning streak.
In the first inning, the Sequoias struck first after stringing together three hits for a run off of pitcher Zach Fiene.
Santa Rosa quickly countered in the bottom of the first on an RBI single off the bat of first baseman J.T. Summers.
Pitcher Jayden Hunt came on to throw in the second inning in a tight spot with runners on second and third, one out and immediately made an outstanding play at the plate on a dribbling ground ball back to the mound.
Assistant coach Tom Francois marveled at that sequence, “I’ll tell you a pivotal play was Jayden Hunt to the plate, when he flipped that ball, we work on that every day. And you know what I love the most about him? He kept his composure. He didn’t get rattled.”
The game remained tied until an offensive eruption in the bottom of the third inning by the Bear Cubs left the Sequoias in the dust 7-1.
Santa Rosa batted around, capped off by a three-run bomb deep over the left field fence hit by second baseman Brett Neidlinger.
The Bear Cubs then went on to score 2 in the fourth inning, 3 in the fifth, including the first home run of the season for the designated hitter Chase Sutherland, and 2 more in the sixth as left fielder Clay De Mars went yard on a solo shot.
After going 3-4 with 4 RBI on the day, Sutherland shared his approach at the plate, “I just try to slow myself down a lot on two strikes, I try to shorten up and I’m just not trying to do too much with the ball and the big fly will come.”
In the bottom of the eighth, with the game out of reach, Santa Rosa began to bring in some new bats off the bench, including first baseman Jack Langley coming into his fourth at bat of the season.
With two strikes on him, Langley knocked a liner to right field for his first hit of the season.
“My approach was sitting on the fastball,” Langley said. “I was watching, you’re starting off every guy with a fastball, so I was sitting heater. When I got to two strikes, I was still looking fastball, and when I got it, I just pushed it to the right side.
Francois recalled his at bat, “You heard the cheers in the dugout. Those guys were so happy for him because he works his tail off during the week, every week, and to give him an opportunity to get in the box and produce like that with a two-strike count. That speaks volumes.”
The Sequoias put up their only other run in the fifth inning on a leadoff home run against Hunt, the only run he would allow in the game.
Hunt would exit after pitching the sixth inning with just the one hit given up as he continually threw to contact all game rather than hunting strikeouts, daring the opponents to beat him.
“I just tell myself to just keep attacking. They hit me, they hit me, but I’m here to get outs,” said Hunt.
Pitcher Cody Collins came on for the Bear Cubs in the seventh and went the rest of the way giving up just one hit and striking out the side in the ninth to end the game in impressive fashion.
The Bear Cubs put on a team-wide offensive display as every batter in their starting lineup played a role in their 14 runs with each player recording either a run or RBI.
“I think we just hit everything on all cylinders today. We hit well, we pitched well. We played clean baseball, no errors.” Francois said about his team’s performance.
Santa Rosa looked to replicate this result as they faced off against the College of the Sequoias twice over the next 2 days. The Bear Cubs finished with a clean sweep after a 5-4 win on Thursday and a 9-0 win on Friday to wrap up the series.
