Down in Arizona, River Valley High School was the place to be for hot prep baseball action as the Trojans played their first games of the 2014 season. The tourney attracted teams from all over the region, California, Nevada and Arizona. At the tourney, the Trojans faced some tough California and Arizona teams and went 2-3-1.
In the first game, the Trojans beat Joseph City 20-0 and West Wendover 20-8 in the second game. The team lost to Imperial 7-6, Mingus 14-0 and Lake Havasu 14-5. The Trojans tied Parker 6-6.
Pahrump hit .308 for the tourney and the pitching was decent with a 6.65 ERA. On defense the Trojans looked great in the first two games, where they gave up only 2 errors. In games 3-6 they had less than five errors per game until they played Lake Havasu. In the Havasu game they gave up seven errors, which was their only bad game of the tourney. Last year Trojans Coach Brian Hayes wanted to bring the fielding errors to less than five per game by the end of the season, so the Trojans could say they are ahead of the game this year.
Josh Mortensen went down with an arm injury during one of the games. He was playing shortstop at the time and could not make the throw to first on a play and ended up walking off the field in pain. Lucky for the Trojans that they are two deep in the infield. The severity of the injury is unknown.
During the tourney, Pahrump Valley scored 37 times, had 36 hits, 28 RBIs, 3 doubles and 3 triples. Offensively the Trojans are starting where they left off last year.
Chad Uyeno cleaned up for the Trojans hitting .727 over the weekend. He hit one double, two triples and he had 8 hits and 7 RBIs for the six games. He was followed by Dylan Ault who had two doubles, one triple, hit .571 with 8 hits and 6 RBIs. AJ Segura also banged in the runs with 7 runs, 2 hits and 3 RBIs and Mortensen hit well with 3 hits and 4 RBIs.
The best pitchers for the Trojans this weekend based on stats were Eduardo Gonzalez, Chad Uyeno and Josh Mortensen.
Gonzalez pitched 6 innings, gave up no runs with 3 hits and 2 unearned runs with 3 strikeouts. Uyeno pitched 3 innings, gave up 4 hits, 3 earned runs and struck out 4. Mortensen also pitched 3 innings, gave up 5 hits, 4 runs and struck out 5.
Drew Middleton also pitched well. He struggled with control last year, but seemed to have it together at the tourney. He pitched 5 innings, faced 25 batters with 4 walks, one strikeout, 7 hits and 5 runs. If Mortensen is out with an injured arm, the Trojans will look to Middleton and Devin Rily because of their experience.
Rily pitched 4 innings and had an off day giving up 13 hits, 5 earned runs and he had 5 strikeouts.
The Trojans played Boulder City on Tuesday, which was too late to report on. The team travels to Mesquite this weekend for another tournament.