Tigers drop two against Columbia

The Mountain Home Tigers dropped two close conference baseball games to Columbia Friday at Columbia, 4-2, and 6-4.

Both games were played at Columbia Friday after Thursday's game at Columbia was rained out.

In the first game, Columbia scored three unearned runs in the first inning and it held up for a 4-2 win.

Mountain Home's Jared Day and Columbia's Ryan Romero battled it out in a great pitchers' duel.

Mountain Home managed just four hits in the first game but scored single runs in the third and seventh innings.

Tiger head baseball coach Mark Cotton thought the game was definitely one they could have won.

"It's kind of the same old story -- it just came down to defense. You look at a couple errors and go back and take those errors away and we win the baseball game. We can't afford to make the mistakes that we've been making defensively."

Anthony Castillo and Joe Gutierrez both had two hits for the Tigers, each getting a double. Castillo also knocked in a run.

Jared Day suffered the loss, despite having one of his best outings of the season, giving up just one earned run and seven hits while striking out eight.

In the second game, Columbia scored a run in the first inning and added another in the fifth before Mountain Home came back with two in the bottom half of the inning to tie the game at 2-2.

The Tigers pushed across a run in the bottom of the sixth to take a 3-2 lead, but then gave up four unearned runs in the top of the seventh to fall behind 6-3. They managed to score one in the bottom of the seventh, but left the tying and go-ahead runs on base, losing 6-4.

"Same old story," said Coach Cotton after the game. "Chalk that up to our defense -- not so much not making routine plays or anything like that, but it just comes down to executing small things, and we definitely didn't do that when it mattered. That's kind of been our M.O. all year -- score a few runs and take the lead, and then give that lead up."

Anthony Castillo had two hits and an RBI for Mountain Home in the second game. Ronnie Young and Skyler Podesek both hit doubles.Young knocked in two runs with his. Jake Hennessey, Alex Rodriguez and Joe Gutierrez also had hits. Skylar Quintal had an RBI.

Alex Rodriguez suffered the loss, despite giving up just two earned runs. The Tigers fall to 2-7 in conference and 6-11 overall.