Visalia uses smallball tactic for road win over JetHawks

Visalia used a hunt-and-peck offense, one that included just two extra-base hits, to knock off Lancaster

Two-out. Bases load. Bottom of the ninth. Your would-be Lancaster pyromaniac on Fireworks Night: pinch hitter Greg Connors.

One pitch from Visalia Oaks closer Ray Noriega. A curveball that Connors lined to Visalia second baseman Eddie Lara.

"Things haven't been going that well lately," Connors said. "I can't find a hole."

The JetHawks found one Saturday night. The 4-1 one they dug for themselves before clawing back toward an eventual 4-3 loss to the Oaks in front of a season-high 5,213 at The Hangar Saturday night.

Until the ninth-inning, the JetHawks' fireworks were limited to Harvey Hargrove's fifth-inning home run - the first JetHawk homer at The Hangar this season.

Of course, this was keeping with the flip side of the evening's Fireworks Night theme.

Of Visalia's 12 hits, only two - Nick Sosa's seventh-inning rocket onto Avenue I - your eventual gamewinning homer - and Rusty Keith's two-out double in the fifth - earned extra bases.

Throw in the pitching of Visalia starter Eric Thompson and the 3 2/3-inning roller-coaster trip of tag-team tandem starter Tom Bennett and it was enough.

Thompson allowed only three hits and Hargrove's homer in his five innings. Bennett, who was rocked for seven runs in two innings last week in Visalia, survived four hits and two runs to hold up his side of the bargain.

The two runs came in the seventh, on an infield single by Jermaine Clark and a bases-loaded walk to Mike Marchiano. In the ninth, Bennett's luck finally ran out.

After retiring Craig Kuzmic and Hargrove, Bennett yielded back-to-back singles to Ramon Valera and Clark.

Enter Tyler Yates, who walked Marchiano on four pitches to load the bases.

Exit Yates and enter Noriega, who threw all of one pitch - the one Connors lined right at Lara for the final out.

"I know this team can hit," Lancaster manager Darrin Garner said about a JetHawks team that left the bases loaded three times. "We will hit. We will hit."

That's what the Oaks did. . . when they weren't running. They hit-and-run with abandon, stole bases with more abandon, and made JetHawks starter Russ Koehler's second trip through the order his last one.

Koehler was so good through three innings that Mariners' minor coordinator of instruction Mike Goff said it was the best he's ever seen out of the tall right-hander. He struck out the side in the second and was perfect through three.

Then came the fourth, when Koehler said his slider - so effective for three innings - decided to take the rest of the night off.

The Oaks didn't. They parlayed a walk to Keith, a hit-and-run single by Lara (3-for-5), an errant pickoff throw by Koehler and a Juan Camilo single into one run.

Two more came in the fifth, via a double by Keith and consecutive singles by Lara, Camilo and Sosa (3-for5). Each member of that latter trio stole second.

"Try to ride a bike without feet," was how Koehler described the missing pitch. "You're in a battle out there and you're in a situation where you know that's the pitch you've got to throw and you're tapping into savings and it's not there. It's very helpless."