<\/p>\n
Battling chilly wind and smatterings of snow, the Montezuma-Cortez High School baseball team split a home doubleheader against Alamosa on May 29.<\/p>\n
Leading the Panthers to victory in Game 2 was Caleb Compton, who pitched five innings and allowed three earned runs on three hits. The junior hurler struck out five batters and walked five.<\/p>\n
Junior Cutter Mathews relieved Compton in the sixth inning and pitched two scoreless frames to secure the victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt all right going into the game, but after the third inning, I had some mechanical stuff that I couldn\u2019t fix,\u201d Compton said. \u201cThat\u2019s why I had all of the walks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Matthews was ready in the bullpen.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a good lead on them, so I knew if I was able to get ground balls, we\u2019d be all right,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Three players led the Panthers at the plate. Matthews bashed a two-run triple, Jasen Engel went 2-4 with a double and 2 RBIs, and Coby Baer went 2-4 with one RBI.<\/p>\n
The Panthers victory followed a sluggish offensive performance in the first game of the doubleheader, which resulted in a 4-1 M-CHS loss.<\/p>\n
Alamosa junior Chance Strand pitched Game 1 for the Mean Moose, and although he yielded six hits and allowed several M-CHS runners to traverse the base paths, the Panthers were unable to score.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Strand) had a really weird motion,\u201d Matthews said. \u201cHe came set, and then he delivered really fast. We had some also base-running errors that cost us, so this week, we\u2019re really going to have to work on base running.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Panthers\u2019 final regular season game will take place at home against Ignacio on May 6.<\/p>\n
The Bobcats defeated the Panthers 3-2 in Ignacio on April 27 in a game in which M-CHS starting pitcher Coby Baer pitched all seven innings and did not allow an earned run. Cordell Baer and Engel both drove in runs for the Panthers.<\/p>\n
\u201cCoby pitched well, but we had two errors in that game,\u201d M-CHS manager Tim Passell said. \u201cThose errors are what cost us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Currently 9-9 overall and 7-3 in the Intermountain League, the Panthers will likely travel to Bayfield on May 13 to begin their playoff run.<\/p>\n
Although players admitted that they are looking forward to the playoff experience, Compton pointed out that his team must take things one game at a time.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Ignacio) beat us on their home field, so when they come here, we\u2019re going to be ready to fight and hopefully get a win,\u201d Compton said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
M-CHS closes out league schedule with win; Panthers await playoff seeding<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68401,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-68400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68400"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=68400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}