LA MIRADA, California- Lance Smith
The Shepherds had their fourth league game in six days against the Inland Valley Bucs on Thursday afternoon. They had won two of their last three coming into today and looked to stay hot and win back-to-back games for the first time this season. Max Montplaisir was the Sheps starting pitcher and hoped to set the tone from the bump.
The Shepherds got off to a quick start scoring one in the 1st and shutting out the Bucs in the first two innings. The momentum built in the first two innings came to a screeching halt when the Bucs had a five-run outburst in the top of the 3rd inning and tacked on another two in the top of the 4th making the score 7-1. At this point, Montplaisir was taken out of the game as things seemed to be unraveling. Memories from just eleven days earlier when the same Bucs team dismantled the Shepherds 17-2 must have flooded the minds of every player for both teams.
Enter, Emry Jackson. The reliever came in and stopped the bleeding immediately and stunned Buccaneer hitters by throwing 4.33 shutout innings and giving the Shepherds a fighting chance to mount a comeback. The Shepherds responded by scoring one in the 5th, three in the 6th, two in the 7th, and one in the 9th for a total of seven unanswered runs that ended with a walk off single from catcher Joel Cervantes to seal the victory in the bottom of the 9th.
Andrew White (2-2) picked up the win and Julian Valenzuela (0-1) was tacked with the loss.
Notes
- Emry Jackson pitched 4.33 shutout innings giving up just 3 hits
- Andrew White closed the game in the 9th and earned his 2nd win
- Connor Aldrich went 3-5 with 2 singles, a double, and 3 RBI’s
- Simms Owens went 2-4 with a single, double, and drawing a walk
- Emry Jackson went 2-5 with 2 singles
- Joel Cervantes drove in 2 RBI’s including the game winner
- Jake Lopez went 1-1 with an RBI single
- The Shepherds defense committed 0 errors for the second consecutive game
Quote from Joel Cervantes
“Honestly, it was hard to see because of the dark but we got it done! It felt good to be able to help the team out with a win where we came back from a pretty tough score and it felt really good to win this one.”
What’s next
The Shepherds have another league game tomorrow, July 9th, versus the Long Beach Legends at 4:30 pm PST. The game will be played at La Quinta High School and will be live streamed on the Shepherds Facebook page which can be found at https://www.facebook.com/socalfcabaseball/. To stay up to date on all things Shepherds baseball follow us on Instagram (@shepherds_baseball), Twitter (@SoCalShpherds), and Facebook (Southern California FCA Baseball).
GO DAWGS!