Pahrump varsity splits 4 games in tournament

The desire to face quality competition is a constant for Pahrump baseball. During the high school season, many opponents simply don’t have the pitching — or fielding — to compete, and while that makes for gaudy records it doesn’t do much to sharpen skills or prepare players for making a run at that elusive state title.

That desire was met last weekend, as both of Pahrump’s summer baseball teams traveled to Las Vegas Sports Park for Empire Sporting Event’s Kings and Queens tournament. Both the 18U and 14U teams competed in Pool A of the Boys High School Division for players 16 and over.

That the Pahrump teams combined to go 2-6 really wasn’t the point, especially under the circumstances, according to Pahrump manager Drew Middleton.

“The nice thing about this tournament is that we played some good competition,” Middleton said. “It wasn’t just some rollover teams like we faced in Bullhead. We faced some good competition out here, and it’s good for our varsity team. And it’s good that we came in, saw some good arms and played some teams that can play defense and hit the ball. That’s good for us to see.”

The 18U team, basically the PVHS varsity, played well for most of the first three games of the tournament, posting two one-run victories before blowing a big lead in the third.

“The varsity came out and did well,” Middleton said of a 5-4 win Friday over the Kingman Storm from Arizona. “It was a sloppy game. We ran into six outs on the bases, which is uncharacteristic of us. But Scott (Hirschi) started and threw well, and Fidel (Betancourt) came in and closed the game out.”

Next came the Nevada Elite Silverbacks, a 16U team that had pounded the younger Pahrump team 16-0 on Friday.

“We jumped on them early,” Middleton said. “They came storming back and we led 8-7 with second and third with one out, and we got a double play to end that game. Leo Finkler hit a 3-run home run that turned out to be the game-winning hit.”

Taking a 2-0 record into Saturday afternoon’s game against the Kingman Raptors, Pahrump started well.

“We come out and we jump on that team 8-1 going into the last inning, and we gave up eight runs,” Middleton said of the 9-8 defeat.

After three one-run games, the party was over Sunday morning as the Pahrump 18U team squared off against Baseball 101, a talented and experienced 16U team from Las Vegas.

“We show up this morning and we play a very, very good team that travels a lot,” Middleton said. “They were in Kansas last week. They have guys from Shadow Ridge and Arbor View. They’re a good baseball team.

“We hung around early, it was 4-1 after four innings. But we were shorthanded this week, we were missing some guys who are varsity pitchers, and we ran out of pitching.”

The result was a hideous 18-2 defeat, and fatigue might also have been a factor. Playing four games in less than 48 hours is not easy, even for young people.

“The first three games our quality at-bat percentage was really high,” Middleton said. “In the fourth game … “

The quality at-bats resulted in some solid offensive production.

“James Metscher was phenomenal at the plate this weekend,” Middleton said. “James had at least four or five stolen bases, at least three doubles, had a triple.”

Metscher finished 5 for 9 with 3 walks for the tournament, with Scott Hirschi and Dustin Lopez each contributing 4 hits and 2 walks to the Pahrump offense. Justyn Ybarra and Drew Jensen had 2 hits, with Jensen driving in 3 runs and Ybarra plating two. Austin Sandoval was on base 10 times and scored twice, and Finkler finished with 4 RBIs and 3 runs.

“Our lineup did pretty well this weekend, top to bottom,” Middleton said. “We didn’t strike out too much, we put the ball in play, we hit the ball hard.”

The pitching was more up and down, especially after the opener.

“Micah Mendoza came in a couple of times and threw strikes when he needed to,” Middleton said. “But we need to hit our spots better, we need better strikeout pitches, we need to know our counts better, but, being short-staffed, we glued things together.”

The 14U team was in over its head, and it gave up 16 runs in three consecutive games before falling 12-7 in its finale. The four games in three days was especially grueling for the younger team, as many of the players had played in the Little League District 4 Tournament during the week.

“Most of our younger team played in the five Little League games,” Middleton said. “I have 20 kids on the 14U team, and I had 11 today. I gave the kids options; if they wanted to they could take this weekend off, and some did. Coming out here in the brutal heat after the battle they had all week in that Little League tournament, tons of respect for them.”

Andrew Zern finished the tournament 3 for 7 with 2 runs and a stolen base for the 14U team.

Middleton gave the teams three days off this week to recuperate, and the 18U team will be back on the field Saturday at home against Desert Oasis. The summer season wraps up July 9.