Saints split four games with Southwestern Oregon

The Mt. Hood baseball team went 2-2 with Southwestern Oregon Community College over four games last weekend, bringing its record to 13-3 in South Region play.

Lane Community College is now only two games back of the Saints in the South, at 11-5, with eight games remaining.

Against SWOCC, the series was back-and-forth, with the teams splitting two doubleheaders in Gresham both on Friday and Saturday. The Saints only had one dominating game, a 9-0 win on Saturday.

On Friday, the Saints took a hard-fought Game 1, eventually winning 2-1 in 11 innings. Southwestern Oregon scored in the top of the seventh to take the 1-0 lead in a game that had very little offense. The Saints answered in the bottom of the ninth on a Kody Matthews single to score Nick Gawley to extend the game into extra innings.

Two innings later, Nick Gawley won the game for the Saints with a walk-off single.

Chase Wiger came in to pitch the final two innings for the win, while starter Seth Rayburn gave up only one run while striking out 11 in nine innings of work.

In the second game of the doubleheader, a shorter seven-inning contest, the Lakers scored a single run in the top of the first and never looked back. Mt. Hood couldn’t muster any offense off its seven hits and lost, 1-0. Saints starting pitcher Nathan Hunter, now 3-1, got his first lost of the season after allowing just one hit in seven innings.

The series resumed Saturday. Saints had no trouble finding offense this time, starting with a four-run second inning, including a Gawley single that scored Tommy Lane and Isaac Benard, making it 2-0. Louis Wolf drove another run right after Gawley’s single, with a double to score Mitchell Rose. Mt. Hood got another score off a walk to finish the inning.

Mt. Hood’s batters weren’t finished, adding two more runs in the bottom of the third to extend the Saints’ lead to 6-0, on the way to a 9-0 final.

Pitcher Joe Balfour got the win, improving to 5-1 on the year, with 10 strikeouts. Balfour leads the Saints in wins (five), strikeouts (48) and earned run average (1.05 per game). Gawley and Benard had two RBIs apiece, and Mt. Hood showed how dangerous it can be when its batters are “on.”

The Saints hoped to take the series win, which it looked like they would get in Game 4, but a late surge by the Lakers put that on skids.

Mt. Hood scored a run each in the bottom of the third, fourth and fifth innings to take a 3-0 lead. But SWOCC answered in the sixth to tie the game, then scored one more in the top of the seventh to take a 4-3 win, and earn a series split.

On Wednesday, the Saints defeated the George Fox University junior varsity team, 9-3, to improve to 23-10 overall on the year.

Next up, Mt. Hood plays Everett Community College in Lacey, Wash., in a two-game series today. The Saints swept a four-game series with Everett earlier this season.

The Saints have a weeklong break, then resume league play on May 1 against Linn-Benton, which is third in the South Region. The four-game series starts in Gresham, then moves to Albany for a doubleheader on May 2.