Hood River Valley’s baseball fortunes turned from good to average in a few days last week, as the Eagles were impressive to start but not so much to finish.
HRV Coach Max Reitz gave his players credit for their 5-2 win over Class 6A Bend on April 5 and fielded the blame in the Eagles’ 9-2 loss at Portland’s Roosevelt on April 7.
“Really tough loss … against a team we should have beat,” Reitz said. “I didn’t have us properly prepared. Time to turn the page and get ready for Ridgeview.”
Ridgeview looms Friday, when the Eagles (5-4) travel to Redmond to face the Ravens (7-2) in a doubleheader — the Intermountain Conference opener for both schools. The two teams play a third game Tuesday in Hood River.
Hood River’s win over visiting Bend — which also lost to Pendleton, 3-1, earlier in the day at Traner Field — was an effort of efficiency. “Bend’s a good team. Their record (3-7-1) does not reflect how good they are,” Reitz said, pointing out that five of Bend’s seven losses were on a five games-in-five days, spring break road trip to Arizona. “When your offensive isn’t clicking (and HRV’s wasn’t at times last week), you’ve got to manufacture some runs.”
For example, against Bend, with two outs, having baserunners get secondary leads (where they take a few extra steps off the bag), can mean the difference between scoring a run or not. That’s what happened in the fifth inning, when the Eagles added a single run to build an insurmountable 5-0 lead. Joe Reitz walked, stole second and scored on a close play at the plate — following Jake Von Lubken’s sharp single to left field.
Coach Reitz said: “We want to put pressure on teams in everything we do — on the mound, at the plate and on the bases. You’ve got to take advantage of that. Joe is just an instinctually good baserunner. On the double (by Mason Spellecy in the fourth inning), he read the ball off the bat and saw it wasn’t going to get caught.”
The fourth inning was the big one, offensively, for the Eagles, and it started like a few others this season with catcher Reitz reaching base — this time on a single. He scored from first on Spellecy’s double and the Eagles would add three more tallies before the inning was over. Hunter Hough hit another double to drive in Spellecy; Ely Kellogg scored on a ground out; and Hough scored on a two-out single from Cole Duckwall.
The lead was more than enough for Von Lubken, who had plenty of help from his defense (although the three Eagle errors in the box score suggested something different). Bend scored in the top of the seventh inning, when a couple of miscues in the Eagle outfield led to two unearned runs. Von Lubken registered a three-hit, five-strikeout, one-walk performance; Bend’s three hits were singles.
Von Lubken, who improved his pitching record to 3-0 on the season, helped his cause with two hits of his own. Hough also was 2-for-3 for the Eagles with two doubles.
Von Lubken had five innings of throwing 15 pitches or less, which is what the Eagles need him to do to keep him on the mound late into games. He has 22 strikeouts and three walks in 22 innings pitched this spring.
“He was great again,” Coach Reitz said of his junior righty. “He’s writing a real cool story for himself this year.”
Although, things didn’t start that smoothly for Von Lubken, who hit the first batter he faced. “I don’t mind establishing inside (part of the plate),” Coach Reitz said. “From there on he was just in total control. And we did some good things behind him.”
Spellecy, who returned to the lineup after nursing a leg injury for a week, started a double play at shortstop to get the Eagles out of an inning. Ryles Buckley “just put on a clinic at first base,” Reitz said. Buckley scooped a few short-hop throws at first and leaped high in the air to snag a line drive and in the same motion, on his way down, tagged out a Bend player who had strayed a little too far off the bag for another double play.
On the other hand, it was Roosevelt who made all the plays against HRV a few days later. The Roughriders (7-5) used a nine-run sixth inning to erase a 2-0 deficit. Roosevelt’s 1-2 hitters, Blaeith Scharp Salter and Izaya Laguardia each homered in the sixth.
Hough had two of HRV’s four hits and scored both of the Eagle runs — one in the second inning, the other in the sixth. Hough took the pitching loss, as Roosevelt held a 4-2 lead when he exited in the sixth. Hough gave way to Cole Duckwall and Keegan Losee to finish the inning.
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