Just a day after Sam Stafford struck out 12 San Luis Obispo Rattlers in six innings, Carson Smith fanned 11 in five innings as the Santa Barbara Foresters held off SLO in front of a big crowd Saturday, 5-3.
Smith allowed no hits through the five innings, but was pulled after that because he will be joining Team USA next week.
“It was tough to take him out, but I was only going to throw him five innings. He threw over 100 innings at [Texas State] this year… He was throwing 95 [mph] with movement,” said manager Bill Pintard.
The Foresters got on the board in the first inning off of back-to-back-jacks from Jeremy Rathjen and Jared Womack. Rathjen’s was a two-run shot, as Nick Melino led off the game with a single. In the last three games, Melino has reached base eight out of 13 times as the leadoff man.
Rathjen drove in Santa Barbara’s fourth run on an RBI double that scored Melino in the bottom of the fifth. SLO responded by getting two runs off of four singles given up by reliever Bryce Uhrig in the sixth, but Santa Barbara responded when Rathjen singled and scored in the eighth to go up 5-2.
Closer Cody Martin picked up his fourth save of the year, but it didn’t come easy. Rattlers third baseman Jimmy Allen led off the top of the ninth by reaching on a Foresters throwing error. David Schultz then singled on what looked like a routine ground ball to shortstop Kyle Kubitza. Instead, the ball took a phantom hop and went over Kubitza’s head.
“That’s baseball, man. It’s never easy,” said Pintard.
Joe Etcheverry drove in Allen on a single, but Martin held on to shut the door.
Cal State Fullerton’s Walker Moore made his debut for the Foresters and had a solid defensive game at first base and went 2-for-3 at the plate.
The Foresters (14-5, 8-3), who are in first place percentage-wise in the CCL standings, will go for the series sweep over the Rattlers (8-12, 2-11) at 1 p.m. on Sunday. All games are broadcast on AM 1490 and www.sbforesters.org.
