Balls, JetHawks continue dropping at The Hangar

Another poor performance by starting pitcher Joe Victery and three errors proved costly as Lancaster lost its fourth straight

By BRIAN ROBIN
Valley Press Staff Writer

Neither wanted it.

Right then, you had to wonder if that would be the point at which the Lancaster JetHawks would self-immolate Tuesday night. The point at which JetHawks manager Darrin Garner would look back at during his postgame postmortem and wonder when things like that would happen to someone else.

Not Tuesday night. Not after McCorkle and Clark's Alphonseand-Gaston routine on Jack Cust's first-inning popup resulted in a first-inning run for the High Desert Mavericks.

Not after McCorkle's error on Abraham Nunez's grounder led to two more runs in the second inning. And not after the Mavericks dropped a 9-3 loss on the JetHawks in front of 2,389 at The Hangar.

You could almost roll out Garner's plea from the 2-1 loss to Bakersfield the night before for his team to execute something besides opportunities for victory. Roll it out and liberally apply it here.

Just like the Mavs liberally applied yet another beating on their High Desert rivals. High Desert reeled off 14 hits - including six in three innings off starter Joe Victery - feasted on three Lancaster errors and gave the JetHawks their fourth straight loss.

All coming after a 45-minute, closed-door, players-only meeting Monday night.

Results of the summit? One High Desert run in the first inning, a byproduct of the fly ball that McCorkle and Clark miscommunicated over that glanced off Clark's glove.

Three more in the second, the byproducts of Alex Cintron's triple, Hector Cruz's walk, Belvani Martinez's sacrifice fly, the first of Ron Callaway's two doubles and McCorkle's error on Nunez's grounder.

One more in the fifth, on the only mistake thrown by reliever Jeff Farnsworth - Nunez's third homer of the year. One in the seventh, on a Nunez single, stolen base, throwing error by catcher Pee Wee Lopez and a wild pitch. And three in the eighth - two coming on Callaway's second double.

Nunez, who entered the game hitting .228, went 4-for-5 and reached base all five trips to the plate. He scored three times and needed only the triple for the cycle.

Much of the early damage came against Victery, who entered Tuesday night with a 12.06 ERA and a .423 opponent batting average. He allowed four runs (one earned), five hits and a walk in his three innings.

Lancaster's offense, which had gasped for air of late, did produce nine hits - or half its total of the three previous games.

And Clark and McCorkle did redeem themselves somewhat in the fourth. Clark's leadoff double, Cirilo Cruz's groundout and McCorkle's sacrifice fly produced the JetHawks' first run.

The second came in the eighth, on singles by Cruz and Harvey Hargrove and a sacrifice fly by Lopez. And the third in the ninth on Cruz's RBI single.