One isn’t always certain who they will face, especially in a nonleague baseball game.
Fortunately, Burbank High did not have to face Warren High of Downey ace Angel Cervantes, who is committed to UCLA and is projected to be drafted this summer in the Major League Baseball draft.
Instead, the Bulldogs went up against a fine freshman southpaw in Ryan Morales, who pitched four scoreless innings in Warren’s 7-2 nonleague win over Burbank Saturday.
“They are solid, but we need to play catch. When we don’t play catch, our margin of error is very small because we’re not a great hitting team at this point,” Burbank coach Bob Hart said. “It’s not to say that we can’t get better, but if you are giving up extra outs you are making your pitcher go out there and get four, five, six outs, it makes it very difficult.”
Burbank (0-2) put runners on base in each of the first two innings.
Tomas Angel singled in the first inning and Adrian Vasquez followed with a walk.
Starting pitcher Colby Bette singled to right field in the second inning and was able to get to third base after a throwing error by Morales following a sacrifice bunt by Taylor Pryor. But in both innings Burbank was unable to score.
Bette was solid for Burbank through three innings as he allowed just one runner to reach base. But things changed in the fourth inning as Warren scored four times on three hits. It also didn’t help that Burbank had two errors in the inning, walked two Warren batters and hit another by pitch.
Warren (1-1) added a run in the fifth inning as Cervantes, who was the designated hitter, led off with a single off Burbank reliever Ryland LeClair. Cervantes scored two batters later when Carlos Navarro grounded out.
Burbank’s bats came alive again in the sixth inning against Warren reliever Oscar Garcia.
Angel led off the inning with a single and scored when Vasquez followed with a double off the center field fence.
Vasquez later scored on a Warren throwing error.
Garcia was able to get out of the inning with a 6-4-3 double play.
Warren added two runs in the seventh inning as Navarro hit a two-run home run to right-center field.
“I felt we were missing our discipline. We were hitting a lot of pitches out of the zone,” Warren coach Cesar Martinez said. “At one point in the third or fourth inning out of 10 pitches nine were balls and we were swinging at those. Offensively that was a big factor for us, swinging at pitches out of the zone.”
