Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
PORTALES - Four unearned runs marred Portales baseball in the Rams' season opener against Clovis on Tuesday afternoon. The Wildcats took advantage of Ram mistakes, and used strong pitching to take a 7-0 victory for their seventh win on the young season.
"Very proud of Sebastian (Nunez) and Garrett (Langrell)," Clovis coach Richard Cruce said of his pitchers. "They came out and threw a lot of strikes. That's what we talk about doing is pounding the zone early and being able to use our offspeed pitch when we're up in the count. I thought they did well on the mound today."
Nunez came out dealing in the early going, as he struck out five and allowed just one hit and one walk in three innings of work. Langrell, meanwhile, pitched the final four innings, and was equally impressive, as he had three strikeouts and three 1-2-3 innings, with his only baserunner allowed being a Logan McDaniel leadoff single to start the bottom of the fifth.
On the other side, Portales (0-1) showed some of its growing pains early. The Rams have to replace three-fifths of their infield this year, including second base, shortstop and third base. A first-inning error by shortstop Baylor Diaz soon resulted in a Cam Kuykendall run scored, thanks to a Jace Piepkorn sacrifice fly to center field.
Clovis (7-2) then capitalized on a two-out error by Portales third baseman Luciano Rodriguez, as his throwing error to first base brought home Kayden Shober and Anthony Gonzales, extending the Wildcat lead to 3-0.
The Wildcats would go on to add a run in the third and sixth innings, before a pair of bases loaded runs off of a hit batsman and a fielding error in the seventh got the Clovis lead up to the deciding 7-0 margin.
"Clovis is a really good baseball team, and we knew that coming in. I felt like (starting pitcher) Damian (Belden) did a really good job of keeping them off-balanced," Rams coach Dusty Nusser said.
"He got some outs early, and then we made an error at third that cost us two runs. Besides that, we had a few walks that scored on us. As far as swinging it, their pitchers are really good. We knew we were gonna struggle a little bit, just because we haven't seen any live pitching. Overall, I was pleased with them. (But) I told our guys that we can't be satisfied with losing, no matter who we're playing."
Nusser went on to say that playing a 6A school like Clovis, especially one with nine games under its belt already, is an advantage in getting his team ready for the season ahead.
Nusser believes that his team will bounce back quickly, as he felt that today was more about getting nerves out of the way, coupled with Portales seeing its aforementioned first live pitching of the year.
The Rams, who will play in the Eunice Tournament this weekend, starting with Kermit at 4 p.m. on Thursday, will try to workout the early-season kinks. As for Clovis, a 7-2 start has this veteran team feeling good about where it stands in the early-going.
The Wildcats have two major tournaments over the next two weeks, as they'll play in the Goddard Tournament, Thursday through Saturday, followed by the Sal Puentes Invitational in Rio Rancho next week.
"We've been pretty good early. They come with the right attitude and they work hard everyday," Cruce explained. "We head to Roswell this week for a big one, (I'm) hoping to see Goddard down the line, (because) they're No. 1 in 5A. Next week, we go back to Rio Rancho and get some of the best schools in the state, and if we want to be the best, we better compete against them."