Don’t look now, but the Cowichan Valley Mustangs have surged into first place in the B.C. midget AAA baseball league.
The Mustangs had their two road games against the Cloverdale Spurs rained out last Saturday, but they swept their doubleheader with the Burnaby Braves on Sunday, improving their season record to a league-best 11-5.
“We thought we had a pretty solid team, you know, so we could be very competitive this year,” Mustangs manager Tod LeSergent said. “But to get off to a 2-5 start had us wondering a bit. Stringing together nine wins in a row has been a great run. We can only hope it will continue, but there are teams we haven’t played yet, and there has been some luck involved to keep the streak alive, so we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. Our goal is to be well positioned for the provincial championship playoff tournament in Richmond at the end of July and this winning streak is definitely doing the trick.”
The Mustangs trounced the Braves 9-3 in the first game on Sunday, out-hitting their hosts 12 to two.
Nearly everyone in the lineup got involved. Cam LeSergent went 2-for-2 with a double and two walks, Jayden Hamm was 2-for-3 with a triple, a walk and three RBIs, Tanner Cummings went 2-for-5 with one RBI, Cole Anderson went 1-for-3 with a double, Jacob Montague and Grady Hamilton were both 1-for-2 with one RBI, Kale Eddy was 1-for-4 with an RBI, and Andrew Strobl went 1-for-3 with a team-high two runs.
Anderson pitched five innings of one-hit ball, striking out five and allowing just one earned run. Brandon Langer pitched the other two innings, striking out two and holding the Braves scoreless.
The Mustangs got off to a rough start defensively in the first game, allowing four runs over the first two innings, but came back and plated two in the top of the seventh to edge the Braves 6-5.
After a rough one-inning start for Nolan Fothergill, Radcliffe pitched five brilliant innings of relief, with 10 strikeouts and just one hit, while the only run scored against him was unearned. Hamm threw the seventh inning and struck out two.
Radcliffe also went 1-for-2 at the plate with an RBI, Anderson went 2-for-3, Dyson Kew was 0-for-2 with an RBI, and Kale Eddy was 0-for-3 with a walk and an RBI.
The Mustangs will travel to the Okanagan Valley this weekend to visit the Kelowna Sun Devils on Saturday and Vernon Canadians on Sunday.