Home troubles continue

Latest loss leaves JetHawks with 1-5 record at The Hangar

Everything seemed to be on track for the Lancaster JetHawks to break out of their early season funk. They held a one-run lead over Visalia and starter Jeff Farnsworth was in perfect control through the first 4 2/3 innings of play Monday afternoon.

It took only two batters for those fortunes to change, though.

Visalia scored four runs with two outs in the fifth and stretched its lead to as many as eight runs in a 12-8 victory that completed a three-game series sweep at Lancaster Municipal Stadium.

"This is something we're going to have to build from," JetHawks manager Darrin Garner said. "We'll just learn from the mistakes we made today."

Lancaster (5-7) dropped its fourth in a row and completed its first homestand of the season 1-5.

It appeared early that the JetHawks would end the losing streak and head for a three-game series in High Desert on a positive note.

Farnsworth (0-2) made a 1-0 lead, furnished by Luis Figueroa's RBI grounder that scored Ramon Valera in the first inning, stand through the first four frames. The right-hander allowed only two hits, while striking out three during that time.

He allowed a leadoff walk to Todd Mensik in the fifth, but seemed to be working his way out of the inning after he retired the next two batters. But Javier Flores singled to put runners on the corners, before Jay Pecci blooped a double into shallow left field that scored both Mensik and Flores and gave Visalia a 2-1 lead.

"That was a bad sequence of pitches (to Pecci)," Garner said. "We've been getting to him with fastballs, and you don't need to give him something that's better suited to his bat speed. . . But that's something these guys have got to learn for themselves. I can't go out there and tell them which pitches to throw."

The next batter, Rusty Keith, blasted a two-run homer off the scoreboard in left-center, and just like that, the JetHawks were down 4-1.

"I threw the wrong pitches in that situation," Farnsworth said. "I should have been smarter than that."

The Oaks stretched the lead to 9-1 with five more runs off Farnsworth and reliever Tim McClaskey in the sixth inning.

That inning was aided by two errors that made all five runs unearned. Valera mishandled a sure double-play ball that would have ended the inning without a run before Harvey Hargrove had a fly ball slip out of his glove in center field two batters later.

"We gave them extra outs," Garner said. "Every time you give extra chances to a team that is swinging the bats that good, it's going to hurt you."

But Lancaster did a good job of battling back, and trailed only 10-8 entering the ninth inning thanks to a three-run homer by Shawn McCorkle and a two-run blast by Mike Marchiano. McCorkle, who broke out of an 0-for-18 slide Friday, also doubled in Figueroa in the seventh inning and finished 2-for-5 with four RBI.

Lancaster also loaded the bases with two outs and had the tying run at the plate, but Marchiano grounded out to second base.

"We put our pitching staff in a bind," Marchiano said. "We didn't give them enough runs until late."

A brush fire flared up along the on-ramp leading from Avenue I to the 14 freeway shortly after McCorkle's sixth-inning home run. Black smoke and flames could be seen beyond the maintenance shed in right field, but the fire was quickly extinguished. Play was temporarily delayed.