The Bakersfield College baseball season is under way. BC’s record after hosting the Bakersfield College tournament at Sam Lynn Ballpark is 0-3-1 overall as the Renegades went winless over the weekend with a 0-2-1 in the tournament.
On Jan. 31, BC lost to the Long Beach City College Vikings 16-7 in the late hours of Feb. 1. The game was scheduled for a later time due to a water line break that caused problems at Sam Lynn the rest of the weekend that pushed games back hours.
In the game against Long Beach, the Renegades could not hold up against the Vikings’ Trevor Costin, who had a grand slam, single, double and was a triple away from hitting for the cycle. BC pitchers also had trouble against the Vikings’ Eric Miranda, who had a double, walk, single, triple and was a home run away from hitting for the cycle as well.
By the bottom of the fourth inning, the score was 11-2 in favor of Long Beach.
On Jan. 30, the Renegades lost to Palomar College 11-2, with A.J. Day’s RBI being the only earned run of the game for the team. Palomar pitcher Casey Edelbrock received the win in relief for the Comets. The game against Palomar was pushed back to 9:50 p.m. due to the water problems, and the game ended shortly before 1 a.m. Art Charles struck out three times against Palomar with a walk and a double.
Bakersfield College tied with Golden West College 7-7 at Sam Lynn during the first game of the BC tournament on Jan. 29. The game was called after 10 innings due to the Irvine Valley and L.A. Pierce game scheduled at 3 p.m. with a three-hour limit on the game.
Golden West scored first in the top of the first inning with three runs to put the Rustlers in the lead. BC retaliated with Art Charles’ two-run home run in the bottom of the first, which made the game 3-2. Charles said, “I was excited early in the game, [to] put my team ahead and hoped we could go from there.”
BC pitcher Jeremy Gonzales started for the Renegades and struggled through the innings he pitched. Gonzales allowed seven runs off 10 hits by the fifth inning.
Charles also had a ground-rule double that was almost a home run. The hit by Charles went over the first fence onto the catwalk in right field, but there are two fences at Sam Lynn. Charles said, “I knew it was going to be a ground rule double. I just went around the bases just in case they didn’t know for sure.”
Charles went 4-for-5 with two walks in the game.
The game from there was back and forth scoring for both teams. In the fifth inning, with the score 7-5 in favor of the Renegades, the Rustlers’ Steven Monahan hit a two-run home run to tie the game with Scott Schauer on third.
Both teams’ defense and pitchers performed very well in the last part of the game, until the 10th inning when the game was called. Right-hand relief pitcher Ryan Huston came in for the Renegades and pitched a solid and scoreless five innings. Huston only gave up four hits and one walk.
BC head coach Tim Painton said about the game, “You’re never happy walking out of a ballpark with a tie.” Painton added, “Nobody’s happy with a tie. I’m sure Golden West wasn’t.”
Yet Painton said, “We’ve made progress from Tuesday to today. We didn’t pitch real well. Our offense was good early. There was almost a role reversal where Huston did a great job in relief. That’s the value of him (Huston) out of the bullpen.he is a strike thrower. He’s not going to hurt himself. He’s not going to walk people. He’s going to come in and challenge hitters.”
Painton added about the teams involved in the tournament, “We’re playing a very talented group of teams early in the preseason. Our goal is to get better each day.
Right now, we got a bunch of good players who are struggling, and you can live with that for a couple of games, but at some point, you’ve got to start to look at a different combination of people that are going to get you on the winning side of things.” BC had different line-ups for the tournament games.
Painton said about the tournament, “I’m extremely disappointed, to be honest with you, how we played this weekend. We pitched poorly, which I thought would be something we could kind of lean on and that didn’t materialize. Then you throwing in poor defense, which some of them were errors. Some of them were balls that should have been caught that went for extra base hits, the walks and anemic offense. You start combing all those factors. We got what we deserved this weekend.”
However, Painton added, “The good thing is that’s the downside; it’s week one of the season, and there’s another 13 more weeks of this thing, and get this thing turned around headed in the right direction. With as many as freshmen we have, hopefully it was a learning experience for them.”
Painton added, “It’s just a matter of going out and playing solid for nine innings, and the complexion will change.”
BC lost at Fresno City College 10-2 with their season opener on the road Jan. 27. Painton said, “We went out. We played nervous. It was obvious. I didn’t see that today [against Golden West] with our ball club.there were strides today, and we’ll just try to make more strides tomorrow and get better each time we step on the field.”
BC played at Fresno on Feb. 3 and travels to Rio Hondo on Feb. 5.