LAKEPORT — A tiring Lilianna Cruz threw almost nothing but strikes in the top of the seventh inning to seal Clear Lake’s 7-4 North Central League I softball win over the Lower Lake Trojans on Tuesday afternoon in Lakeport.
Lower Lake (1-4 league, 2-5 overall) brought the top of its batting order to the plate in the seventh when the freshman Cruz reached back for that something extra. Twelve of her 14 pitches in the inning went for strikes, including the first nine. She struck out Sam Edrich on five pitches, retired Kyleigh Mock on a flyout to center field, then got her pitching counterpart, Jessica Hernandez, to fly out to right field to end the game.
“Lily looked more like Lily today,” Clear Lake head coach Racheal Harmon said. “She was getting tired out there, but she was fighting.”
Harmon said she also took Cruz out of her comfort zone a bit in regard to the pitches she was calling for the left-hander.
“Lily was working hard,” Harmon added.
Cruz allowed only three hits and one earned run. Two Clear Lake errors played a huge role in allowing Lower Lake to cut a 5-0 deficit to 5-4, but the freshman kept her composure and blanked the Trojans over the final three innings, retiring nine of the 10 final batters she faced.
Errors also hurt Lower Lake in the early going as Clear Lake (2-2 league, 3-3 overall) struck for three runs in the first inning and two more in the second to put the Trojans in a 5-0 hole.
“We’ve been burying ourselves right off the get-go, we did it against Cloverdale, too,” Lower Lake head coach Brett Doud said of the early deficits the Trojans are finding themselves in of late.
And that’s making it even tougher on a team that simply can’t find its hitting groove, according to Doud.
“We’re in a slump and we need to get out of it,” he said following a fifth straight loss for his club.
Clear Lake, fresh off a 17-2 five-inning road loss to St. Helena on Friday, was determined to give a better account of itself against Lower Lake, and Harmon said that’s exactly what happened.
“We showed up flat to St. Helena, but they brought it today,” Harmon said. “They were hungry to hit.”
Clear Lake finished with 10 hits, three of those by lightning-quick leadoff hitter and slapper Joy Ingalls (3-for-4), who excels at beating the ball into the ground and dashing down the line before the defense can make a play.
Doud said the Trojans have worked hard in practice on their slap defense, but it wasn’t readily apparent in the top of the first inning. Ingalls bounced a slow roller toward shortstop and was nearly standing on the bag before Lower Lake could field the ball. Worse yet, the next batter, Sierra Bruch (2-for-3), bounced a grounder toward pitcher Hernandez, who quickly pounced on it, but when she turned to make a throw to first base no one was covering the bag and Bruch was safe. Ingalls went all the way to third base on the play.
After Bruch stole second, Raina Clifton hit a hard grounder that caught a piece of third base Kylie Hartmann’s glove before deflecting into left field. The hit score the game’s first two runs. Things got even worse when Lower Lake dropped a flyball that put runners at first and second, but Hernandez was able to stop the bleeding at that point by retiring the next three batters.
Clear Lake pushed its advantage to 5-0 in the third. The first run scored on a fielding error at first base, the next two on an overthrow of first base. The Cardinals were looking for more with two on and two outs when Grace Gomez hit a hard grounder that struck a Clear Lake runner in the baseline, which is an automatic out.
A little charity from Clear Lake’s defense helped get Lower Lake right back into the game as the Trojans scored three times in the top of the third.
Sam Edrich, who had bounced into a force play at second base, was standing at first with two outs when Cruz hit Kyleigh Mock with a pitch. Hernandez followed with a double into the right-center field gap that scored Edrich and should have scored Mock, but she missed second base and had to go back and tag the bag before advancing to third. It didn’t matter as things turned out because Kayla Doud’s grounder to third base was thrown away at first, allowing both Mock and Hernandez to easily score.
Lower Lake closed to 5-4 in the top of the fourth inning, again with help from the Cardinals, as Hartmann doubled to the fence in right-center field, advanced to third on a Clear Lake throwing error, and scored on a two-out wild pitch.
Clear Lake provided Cruz with a little breathing room in the bottom of the fourth when Ingalls led off with an infield single, moved to second on a sacrifice bunt, and scored on a two-base throwing error. Cruz (2-for-3) then helped herself by lining a RBI single into right field to make it 7-4.
The final three innings held little drama for Cruz and the Cardinals as she faced just one over the minimum. Cruz finished with eight strikeouts and three walks. Hernandez also went the distance, allowing just two earned runs while striking out three and walking two.
“And she’s only about 80 percent (because of an ankle injury),” Doud said of his pitcher. “Her ankle is still black and blue.”
Lower Lake hosts Willits on Friday while Clear Lake travels to Cloverdale. Both games start at 4 p.m.
Notes: Only a solid defensive play by the Trojans in the bottom of the sixth prevented Ingalls from going 4-for-4 s Hernandez fielded a tough-chance grounder with the corners crashing and made a nice throw to first base where second baseman Jacey Celli was covering. Celli also made a diving catch moving to her left in the bottom of the fourth to take a hit away from Gomez. Third baseman Hartmann flashed a little leather in the bottom of the fifth by recording the first two outs of the inning, the first on a popup in foul territory, the next on a soft liner off the bat of Amber Smart that Hartmann momentarily juggled before putting the ball away.
