Tigers lose to Middleton but shut out Columbia

The Mountain Home Tigers split their conference games last week, getting blanked at Middleton but shutting out Columbia at home.

Middleton 10, Mountain Home 0

(6 innings)

Middleton broke open a close game with six runs in the sixth inning to down the Tigers 10-0 last Tuesday at Middleton in SIC 4A Conference baseball.

The Tigers got three of their four hits of the game in the first inning, but failed to score. Their only other hit was a lead-off double by Jesse Cobos in the second inning. After that, Viking pitcher Alex Vasquez allowed just two base runners the rest of the way.

Middleton took advantage of four walks by Levi Abrahamson in the second inning to score two runs and added two more in the fourth to go up 4-0.

The Vikings took advantage of two walks, two hit batters and two hits in the bottom of the sixth to score six times to end the game 10-0 by the 10-run rule.

"The first inning was probably on me," on a strategy error involving the runners, said Tigers baseball coach Mark Cotton. "But outside of that, I thought our approaches at the plate were brutal. I thought we played decent defense, and we pitched it okay, but Middleton came out to play today, and we came out flat.

"Nothing's going to be given to us, and we've got to come out and earn everything that we get, and we just showed up and expected to get a 'W' today by not putting any heart into it, and it showed," the coach added.

Mountain Home had just four hits. Jesse Cobos had a double and John Kennison, Zach Peterson and Skylar Quintal all singled.

Levi Abrahamson suffered the loss to drop to 0-3 on the season.

Tigers 1, Wildcats 0

It was a great pitching duel Thursday at Tiger Field, as the Tigers defeated Columbia 1-0 in conference baseball.

Zach Peterson and Levi Abrahamson combined on a six-hit shutout, and Mountain Home managed only four hits off Columbia's Joe Hull (who struck out 11 batters) but scored an unearned run on a wild pitch in the second inning to get the win.

"We did some really good things," said Coach Cotton after the game. "We made some huge plays -- I think we had three double-plays in the game -- and got great pitching performances out of Zach Peterson and Levi Abrahamson.

"Offensively we really didn't do much," the coach added. "We did enough -- we actually scored on the wild pitch -- but when we did have runners in scoring position, we didn't have the timely hitting, but we made the plays when we needed to make them.

"For us to win a 1-0 ball game is a big deal for us -- especially when you consider how we've played defensively recently, so I can't be more proud of these guys," he said. "I think we've made some huge strides coming into this long break that we have, and it's going to give us a lot of confidence going forward."

Jesse Cobos had two of the Tigers' four hits, including a double, and scored the lone run of the game. Tyler McCall and Jake Ryan had the other two hits.

Mountain Home's Zach Peterson scattered five hits in five innings, striking out two, to improve to 2-1 on the season. Levi Abrahamson gave up just one hit in two scoreless innings of relief, striking out three and recorded his first save.

The win improved Mountain Home to 5-4 on the season and 3-4 in conference play. They are off now until April 4 when they travel to Caldwell to face the Cougars in conference baseball.

Their March 20 doubleheader with Kimberly was postponed because of weather. It will be played on April 6 starting at 11 a.m.