The Citrus College men’s baseball team suffered a loss in a matchup against the Antelope Valley Marauders on March 16. The Owls came into the game with a 5-1 loss two days earlier to Glendale Community College, making this the fourth back to back loss this season.
The Owls struggled to hit the ball throughout the game with only one player having a multi hit game and a total of seven hits. Kanta Kobayashi, centerfielder, went 2 for 4 with a strikeout.
“I don’t think we swung the bats very well … we had a few hits at the end but after they made big mistakes.” Steve Gomez, head coach of the Owls said.
The Owls came up just short in their 3-2 loss to the Marauders in the first of four game series this season. The Owls provided a great performance from starting pitcher Juan De La Torre.
“I just had to keep my composure and I had a couple of tough innings but I just had to stickem through and everything worked out in the end. I started as a closer going two or three so this was my biggest outing but I feel good after that. I just tried to stick it in there and I always knew I could go deep … We didn’t get the win but I don’t really care about my performance I just care about winning that’s the main thing,” De La Torre said.
Torre in his first start went out and pitched for eight innings and dealt eight strikeouts with only one walk. Through those eight innings, Torre gave up nine hits and two earned runs, with one of the runs from Joe Lamont, the infielder from Antelope Valley, on his home run in the third inning.
“It was a tie game at the time and I think it was either 0-0 or 1-1 at the time and to be honest with you, I was just trying to put the ball in play something hard and just tried to get on base for someone to knock me in. But I caught it nice and it was a good piece it felt good off the bat.” Lamont said.
That was the first homerun of the season for Lamont and it pushed the team’s home run total to six.
The owls look to bounce back from a two game losing streak as they play against Victor Valley at 2:30 p.m. on March 19 at Citrus College.
