Mountain Home drops three conference games

The Mountain Home Tigers opened their 4A SIC conference baseball schedule with three straight losses last week.

Caldwell 10, Mountain Home 9

The Tigers opened their schedule at home against Caldwell last Tuesday, and came up short against the Cougars, 10-9.

A four-run third inning gave Mountain Home a 5-3 lead over the Cougars, but Caldwell regained the lead in the fourth, scoring three runs to take a 6-5 lead.

The Cougars then added two more in the fifth, and single runs in the sixth and seventh to go up by five runs. Mountain Home rallied for four runs in the bottom of the seventh, and had the tying and winning runs on base, but could not bring them in as the fell short in the final inning.

With the loss, the Tigers dropped to 0-1 in conference and 2-5 overall. Four of those five losses were by one run.

"Our guys did a good job in the bottom of the seventh knocking across four runs," said Tigers baseball coach Matt Bundy. "That play in about the fourth inning where their shortstop went deep in the six-hole to knock that down and save a run for them turned out to be huge.

"We've just got to be sure that we mentally push through those moments and not have little lapses that we have to make up for later," the coach added. "Caldwell's the top of the conference, so we're feeling pretty good if we can play them to one run and have a legitimate shot at wining, we're going to start winning some of those one-run games."

Cody Blakemore, Jesse Cobos, Zach Petersen and Tyler McCall each had two hits. Blakemore had a double and drove in three runs, Cobos had a triple and drove in two, Petersen had a triple and drove in one and McCall scored three runs. Bailey Miller-Hodge and Kai Corbett also had hits for the Tigers.

Jesse Cobos threw five innings for the Tigers, striking out nine batters. Tyler McCall pitched the final two innings and suffered the loss.

Skyview 8, Mountain Home 2

The Skyview Hawks jumped out to a 7-1 lead after three innings and cruised to an 8-2 conference win over the Tigers at Skyview last Thursday.

Mountain Home managed just four hits off Skyview pitchers, Tyler McCall had two of them. Curran Price and Bailey Miller-Hodge had the other hits.

Cody Blakemore suffered the loss, throwing four innings while giving up seven runs and nine hits. Bailey Miller-Hodge pitched the final two innings, surrendering one run.

Skyview 9, Mountain Home 3

In their second game of the week, the Hawks took advantage of Mountain Home errors to shoot out to a 6-0 lead after three innings and went on to a 9-3 win on Friday at Mountain Home.

The Tigers scored three runs in the fifth inning to cut the deficit to 6-3, but managed just one more hit after that, as they lost to Skyview.

Mountain Home had just three hits in the ball game, two of them by Teddy Reaume. Luke Lockard picked up his first hit of the season, which was the Tigers' first hit of the game.

Zach Petersen suffered the loss in his first outing of the season. He gave up five hits in four innings of work, and all six runs he yielded were unearned.

"We really played two similar games," Coach Bundy said. "Both games, the first inning or two we spot them a couple runs, make one or two miscues and we're down four or five runs and then we play them pretty tight the rest of the way. I told the guys after the game that we're a couple plays away from turning these games into wins.

"Today, we had two outs in the first inning, and we give up four runs after a defensive miscue, and those things happen," the coach added. "You've just got to recover from them and play the game, and after that first inning, we did.

We played a great second through seventh inning today, and yesterday, we played a great third through seventh inning," the coach added. "But we've just got to play well all seven innings, and we'll start getting these wins."

The Tigers fall to 2-7 on the season and 0-3 in conference play. They traveled to Bishop Kelly on Tuesday and host Middleton on Thursday before traveling to Middleton on Friday.