Trojans baseball team is taking one game at a time said Trojans Coach Brian Hayes.
The team traveled to play the Desert Pines baseball squad and beat them 13-7.
Against Desert Pines, the team had 1 error. Josh Mortensen, “Yoshi”, pitched 4-strong innings to pick up the win and also added 3 hits and scored 3 runs. He was named player of the game.
The Trojans scored 1 in the 1st, 2 in the 3rd, 5 in the 4th, 4 in the 5th and 1 in the 6th.
Hayes wants his team to focus on each road game coming up because they can’t afford to lose any more games (5-1).
“Although we have the Faith game coming up, we are focused on the next game, which is Clark. We can’t start thinking ahead because if we lose one of the next two league games, our shot at a league title and the number one seed is gone. We don’t expect Faith to lose another league game. We are focused on Clark today, Western after today, then we get a practice game against Chap (the #1 on the other side), and we will get the kids tuned up for Faith at practice on Saturday,” Hayes said.
In order for the Trojans to have a chance of beating Faith in their second meeting, which is next week on Monday, the team has to be hitting.
The hot bats going into the Faith game are Chad Uyeno hitting .377 and leading the team in RBIs with 26 and 23 hits. Uyeno has 2-2B, 2-3B and 4 home runs. He is followed by Dylan Ault who is the leading hit leader with 33 and has a .440 batting average with 23 RBIs, 7-2Bs, 1-3B and 1 home run. Cody Kovatch has also been doing well and he has a .381 batting average with 24 hits and 16 RBIs and he is up there in the RBI department with AJ Segura who has a .286 average with 17 RBIs.
The Trojans put pressure on the base pads and try to make other teams make the errors. The team likes to run the ball and has 98 stolen bases as a team with Yoshi leading the team in stolen bases with 31 stolen bases.
“As far as the steals go, our team philosophy is to put pressure on the other team. As a former catcher, we want the other team to worry about the threat of the steal. The threat of the steal gives our hitters a chance to sit on the fastball,” Hayes said.
Going into Faith Lutheran on Monday of next week the Trojans have a .336 batting average, a 3.8 ERA, and .916 fielding percentage.
Faith Lutheran has similar stats. They have a team batting average of .372, and ERA of 1.43 and a fielding percentage of .949. Faith makes few errors. The interesting aspect about Faith is that Josh Mortensen has almost more stolen bases then the entire Faith team. Faith only has 37 stolen bases, but Faith has a different style of play. They win games on their good pitching and superb defense.
The team lost only two games in the month of April to Coronado and Liberty. Both teams are 4-2 in Division I and in second place in the Southeast League. Faith also just beat Basic 5-2 the Division leader of the Southeast League.
Liberty soundly beat Faith 11-2 and did it with the bat and the solid pitching of Dan Skelling who had an ERA of 2.33. Liberty hit Faith with 14 hits. Basic and Liberty are rated the 2 and 3 respectively in the Southern Nevada Coaches poll. In the game against Coronado the Crusaders committed 2 errors.
“No matter who we play, the goal is always the same, score 7 or more and allow 5 or less. When we do one of these two (or both), we will win games. We don’t have a set rotation for this upcoming week, but we expect to start Uyeno, Gonzalez, Rily, and possibly Mortensen,” the coach said.