Baseball: Rustlers Earn the Sunday Win in a Slugfest

Huntington Beach, Calif. - Golden West College ended their series against Saddleback with a 14-10 victory after dropping the first two games by one run on the road. The Rustlers improve to 16-12 overall and 4-8 in Orange Empire Conference Play, where they sit in sixth place. 

The Rustlers ended Saddleback's starting pitcher's outing short after sending three home runs over each outfield wall before the end of the second inning for a total of seven runs. 

Dylan Kordic launched his fifth home run of the season over the center field wall, for an average distance of 417 feet, bringing in three batters to get the Rustlers on the board in the bottom of the first. Kordic is batting .343 on the year and has driven in 23 runs on 36 hits. 

With two outs on the board in the second inning, Rocco Caballero smashed another three-run home run to left field to score Preston Allen and Dylan Taguiam. This was Caballero's first home run of the season. 

If the Rustlers were not fired up enough, Ayden Garcia sent a ball over the right field wall for a back-to-back home run to put the Rustlers up 7-0 in the second. 

The momentum carried into the third inning, where they scored four runs off two hits. With bases loaded, Nathan Beckley drove in a run after getting hit by pitch. Caballero worked the count to get walked, which brought another run in before Saddleback motioned for their second reliever to enter the game. 

A new arm on the mound did not faze Garcia, who hit an RBI single to extend Golden West's lead 10-2. Beckley scored on a passed ball to add more cushion to the score before the Rustlers ended the third inning. 

The squad scored their last three runs in the seventh inning off two singles by Beckley and Garcia and a double by Caballero. 

Luke Higgins started on the bump for the Rustlers and earned his third win of the season after going five and one-thirds innings. Higgins earned all five runs scored against him, allowed eight hits, struck out eight, and walked two batters. 

Jake Ferretti struggled to record an out for the Rustlers before Jack Smith took over in the sixth inning. Smith was a menace on the mound, holding Saddleback to two hits, no runs, two punch outs and no walks through two and two-thirds innings. 

After Alex Ramos allowed two runs and got into a bases loaded situation with two outs in the ninth, the coaching staff called upon Andrew Stanley to retire the last out of the game. 

A passed ball allowed a runner at third to score for Saddleback's 10th run of the game before a fly out to right field earned Stanley his eighth save of the season. Stanley remains leading the conference in saves. 

With this win, the Rustlers have scored 200 runs this season with a .295 batting average. 

The Rustlers will take a break from conference play as they visit Pasadena City on Tuesday at 2 p.m.