The Bakersfield College baseball team put 12 runners on base but failed to score any runs during Game 1 of its best-of-three, first-round CCCAA Southern California Regional playoff series against visiting Riverside City College. RCC starting pitcher Daniel Martinez held the No. 8 Renegades to just one hit in 8-plus innings before Graham Kuck hurled a scoreless ninth to nail down a 5-0 victory for the No. 9 Tigers on Friday. BC had just three hits. Two of them came in ninth inning when the Renegades loaded the bases for the second time in the game. However, both times BC (21-20) failed to deliver in the clutch. RCC (26-15) had several timely hits including a second-inning, two-out RBI single by Diego Guerrero that gave the Tigers a 1-0 lead. Joseph Hodapp and Shane Martinez extended the RCC lead to 3-0 with back-to-back singles off BC starting pitcher Nathan Ortiz an inning later.
After Ortiz allowed another run in the fifth on RBI single by Daniel Martinez, Shane Martinez capped off the scoring In the eighth by smashing an offering from BC reliever Joey Salinas over the left field fence for a solo home run. Salinas pitched the final two innings. Ortiz went the first seven, allowing four runs on eight hits and four walks.
"We didn't pitch very well," BC coach Tim Painton said. "It seemed like every inning the leadoff hitter was on base, and it's tough to work around (that) for nine innings...Offensively they created us some opportunities with hit batters and walks. We just didn't punch anything across."
Ortiz's counterpart, Daniel Martinez, issued six walks and hit one batter before he had his no-hitter finally broken up with one out in the seventh inning.
After Joe Pineda bounced out to start the inning, Luke Lewis hit a hard grounder past RCC second baseman Diego Guerrero into centerfield for a single.
BC's other two hits were ninth-inning singles by Hector Ruvalcaba and Brycin Hernandez.
Zach Williams went 0 for 3 but got on base safely for an 11th straight game when he was beaned in the third inning.
Game 2 of the series is scheduled for today (Saturday) at 1 p.m. Game 3 (if necessary) will start approximately 30 minutes following the conclusion of Game 2.