The first home game was an ideal time for the Pahrump Valley baseball team to start erasing the memory of a rough opening weekend.
You might even say it was perfect.
Senior Garrett Lucas did not allow a runner to reach base over five innings Tuesday as the Trojans rolled to a 10-0 mercy-rule win over Del Sol.
“My first perfect game. It feels great,” Lucas said. “After the first inning, I was like, ‘You know, this is a good day.’”
The one-sided nature of the contest made it easy to forget just how well Lucas was doing on the mound.
“It was a perfect game? I didn’t know that,” Pahrump Valley coach Brian Hayes said, pulling a baseball out of his jacket pocket. “That’s good, because I’ve got the gamer right here, and I’ll have to give it to him.”
It was an easy day for the Pahrump Valley offense, as there were two hit batters, a walk, three wild pitches and passed balls and five stolen bases just in the first two innings before the Dragons made changes at pitcher and catcher.
“They gave us a lot of runs that we probably shouldn’t have scored,” Hayes said.
Most of those runs came during a seven-run second inning, helped by three Del Sol errors. Pahrump Valley already had led 1-0 thanks to a double-steal by Jalen Denton and Joey Koenig as the Trojans scored without a hit in the first inning.
Things went south quickly for Del Sol after that. A hit batter and an outfield error set the table for right fielder Dylan Grossell’s RBI double down the left-field line and a two-run single by shortstop Chase McDaniel. The next four batters reached base, including Willie Lucas’ RBI double to right-center, before Cyle Havel, the ninth player to bat in the inning, belted a sacrifice fly.
The long inning didn’t have a negative effect on Garrett Lucas, who had plenty of time to sit before and after he singled and was taken out for a courtesy runner during the rally.
“Whenever I came back into the dugout, I would tell myself, don’t zone out,” he said. “Because if you do, they’ll start getting hits.”
That never happened. There was plenty of contact, as Lucas only struck out four. But that’s par for the course.
“There were a lot of ground balls, and I had a good defense behind me,” he said. “Usually I’m not really striking guys out.”
“Our defense looked night and day different from the last game he pitched,” Hayes said. “We tell our pitchers to pitch to contact and our defense is going to make plays behind them, and if they can’t we’ll find guys who can make plays. That’s why these guys are out here, because they can make those plays.”
Garrett Lucas almost had a chance to end the game himself, as he was on deck with the score 9-0 in the bottom of the fifth. But instead it was Willie Lucas, racing home on yet another passed ball, to finish off the Dragons.
The win is a big positive for the Trojans after a disastrous appearance at the Route 66 Baseball Classic in Mohave Valley, Arizona. After opening the tournament with an 8-1 win over Kingman, Arizona, in which Denton tripled and drove in three runs and combined with Rayder Maestas on a two-hitter, the Trojans dropped four straight games by a combined score of 32-10, managing just one run in each of their last two games.
“We basically showed up to play the first game, and I think the rest of the weekend the kids were living in the hotel rooms, playing video games, socializing,” said Hayes, who said his team has struggled in early-season tournaments each year but one during his six seasons.
“We travel, we stay in a hotel and we don’t play very well,” he said. “Then when we play these tournaments locally where we get on the bus and go play, and we tend to do better. We as coaches are hoping it’s a focus thing, and it’s just a matter that at some points the kids have to decide what’s more important, playing baseball or all the social aspects that are involved.
“We’re fairly young. We have quite a few sophomores and juniors, and for some of them it was their first trip out of here, so it’s something they have to learn how to deal with. The states are in Reno, so how are they going to handle that?”
But on this day, it was all baseball.
“We had some good approaches at the plate,” Hayes said. “Even some of our outs were hard-hit outs. And some of our mistakes were aggressive mistakes, and we keep telling them to be aggressive.”
That’s especially true on the basepaths, where the Trojans stole seven bases in seven attempts, including three by Koenig.
“I feel that even if you don’t steal a bag, the threat to steal a bag is going to get you more fastballs,” Hayes said.
Pahrump Valley improved to 2-4 on the young season, while Del Sol fell to 0-2.
Contact Sports Editor Tom Rysinski at trysinski@pvtimes.com On Twitter:@pvtimes