Tigers continue to improve by beating Nampa, Buhl

The Mountain Home Tigers won three of five games last week in a busy week of baseball.

Tigers 10, Nampa 9

Jake Ryan's walk-off single with two out in the bottom of the seventh inning helped the Mountain Home Tigers hold off Nampa 10-9 last week in conference baseball in Mountain Home.

Mountain Home built up a 5-1 lead after three innings, led 7-3 after four, and 8-7 after five.

Nampa scored two runs in the top of the sixth to go up 9-8, but the Tigers tied it in the bottom of the sixth and won it with Jake Ryan's hit in the bottom of the seventh.

"It was a huge win for us, to have the lead, lose the lead and then be able to show some resiliency to come back and get the win," said Tigers head coach Mark Cotton.

The Tigers bats came alive for 11 hits, led by Skyler Podesek with three, including a double, a triple and an RBI. Jesse Rodriguez had two doubles and knocked in three runs. Zach Peterson and Teddy Reaume both had two hits and Peterson had an RBI. Jesse Cobos and Jake Ryan both had hits and RBIs.

Skylar Quintal, who pitched the final three innings in relief of Levi Abrahamson, picked up the win.

Bishop Kelly 5, Mountain Home 1

Mountain Home's Zach Peterson and Bishop Kelly's Bowen Ogata had a great pitching duel going until the Knights pushed across three unearned runs in the sixth to go on to a 5-1 win Thursday at Bishop Kelly.

Lead-off walks in the second and fifth innings both came around to score for Bishop Kelly as they led 2-0 after five. The Knights added three more in the sixth and Mountain Home pushed across a run in the seventh to make it a 5-1 final.

"Zach Peterson threw a gem on the mound," the coach said. "I think our biggest flaw was we couldn't get anything going offensively, and when we did, we didn't execute, but as far as Zach's performance, he totally kept us in the game and I thought our defense played great, but it's just putting all three phases of the game together."

John Kennison and Skyler Podesek had Mountain Home's only two hits against the Knights. Zach Peterson suffered the loss, despite giving up just two earned runs. He stands at 1-1 on the season.

Skyview 23, Tigers 5

The Skyview Hawks pounded out 15 hits and took advantage of six Mountain Home errors, seven walks and two hit batters to work over the Tigers 23-5 in five innings on Friday at Tiger Field in Mountain Home.

The Hawks jumped out to a 10-2 lead after three and put the game away with 11 runs in the fourth.

"In back-to-back nights I think we've showed how good we can be and how ugly things can get with us," Cotton said.

Jesse Cobos and Skylar Quintal both had two hits at the plate. Cobos knocked in two runs. Skyler Podesek had a two-run triple and Tyler McCall and Levi Abrahamson also had hits.

Levi Abrahamson, the first of five Mountain Home pitchers, suffered the loss to drop to 0-2 on the season.

Tigers 10, Buhl 7

Tigers 15, Buhl 5

The Tigers snapped a two-game losing skid with a doubleheader sweep of the Buhl Indians Saturday at Tiger Field in Mountain Home.

A four-run sixth inning by Buhl wiped out a 7-3 Mountain Home lead, but the Tigers pushed across three runs in the bottom of the sixth to regain the lead and go on to win the first game 10-7.

Skyler Podesek had a double and triple and Jesse Cobos had two hits, including a double, and drove in a run. John Kennison had a hit, drove in two runs and scored three. Teddy Reaume had a two-run single and scored twice. Zach Peterson had an RBI-single and Jake Ryan also had a hit.

Skylar Quintal, who relieved John Kennison in the sixth inning, picked up the win to improve to 2-0.

Mountain Home scored six runs in the first inning and seven in the second during the second game to jump out to a 13-0 lead. They won it, 15-5, in five innings.

Skylar Quintal had three hits, including a double, and drove in five runs. Teddy Reaume had two hits, including a triple, and drove in two runs. Jesse Cobos had a two-run triple, John Kennison, Justin Schmidt, and Jake Ryan all had hits and RBI, and Zach Peterson had a double.

Cobos gave up just two hits and struck out six in picking up the five-inning win.

Coach Cotton was pleased to get the sweep.

"We started slow in the first game -- we're still making some of those errors and stuff -- but outside of that, I thought we played really well," he said. "We hit the ball really well -- I think we've done that well pretty much all season -- I was worried that that was going to be a weakness of ours.

The Tigers improved to 4-3 on the season. They have another busy week this week. They were at Middleton on Tuesday, host Kimberly for two starting at 4 p.m. today, March 20, and host Columbia on Thursday, March 21, at 5 p.m.