Baseball: PVHS whacks the heck out of the ball

Trojans baseball won a stunner in the seventh inning 24-20 against Mojave on Wednesday.

The team has been sizzling these past two weeks with a tournament win at the Cowboy Classic, a win against a Colorado team on Monday, and now Mojave (8-9 overall,2-3 Sunset League). Pahrump (18-5-l, 5-1) has a five-game winning streak going.

On Wednesday the team was losing at Mojave in the sixth inning 18-10 and by the end of the sixth the game was 16-20.

Then the Trojans’ bats got hot in the seventh and they scored eight more runs. Senior Josh Mortensen got the tying run and senior Dylan Ault got the go-ahead two-run single with two out in the top of the seventh to give the Trojans the win.

Mortensen said that the team just hit the ball that day.

“Another factor was that there were a lot of errors and the Mojave field is not in great shape,” Mortensen said. “When the ball gets hit on that infield it’s very unpredictable and hard to read.”

Ault was the player of the game. Ault finished 6-for-7 with a triple, 5 runs, and five RBIs. On the year, Ault has 28 hits and is tied for the lead with Carlos Rivera and Josh Mortensen. Out of the three hitters, Ault has the best batting average, .459. He also leads the team with 23 RBIs.

Trojans Coach Brian Hayes said his pitchers struggled throwing strikes all day. The team used three pitchers during the game. Drew Walker pitched 1.2 innings and allowed 5 hits and 5 runs. Josh Mortensen pitched two innings and allowed 11 hits and 8 runs. Kyle Kral pitched three innings and got the win and allowed 6 hits and 7 runs.

The pitching staff gave up a total of 22 hits during the game and walked 7.

According to Hayes, the pitching was not all to blame, the team made numerous defensive mistakes too that didn’t help the pitchers, six errors in all.

“We will have to do a better job of throwing strikes and making plays on defense to beat Faith Lutheran,” Hayes said on Thursday morning “We did beat the heck out of the baseball though.”

His team recorded 25 hits during the game.

The next game for the Trojans is at Western on April 14 at 3:30 p.m. Pahrump played Faith Lutheran on Thursday, which was past deadline.