Baseball blanks SAC to gain ground

The Saddleback baseball team appears to be heating up after winning its fourth game in the last five outings on Thursday at Doug Fritz Field.  The latest win was a 9-0 stomping of Santa Ana College to move the Gauchos within a game of first place.

Saddleback suffered through some grim moments a few weeks back when it lost 3-of-4 to start the conference schedule and was looking upwards at a lot of teams in the Orange Empire Conference standings.  The Gauchos have bounced back, completing a sweep of perennial power Santa Ana this week with a critical two-game set against Cypress College on deck.

Saddleback had two big innings on Thursday, scoring four times in the third inning and five more times in the fifth while riding the hot hand of freshman pitcher Cameron Aufderheide.  The Trabuco Hills High School product pitched a complete game four-hitter in improving to 4-0 on the season.

Saddleback opened the bottom of the third inning with four straight hits as Alex King had an infield single, Jared Donahue doubled, Colby Schultz singled and Cole Stanton tripled to make the score 3-0.  The following batter Brett Barker grounded out to score Stanton and the Gauchos were off and running.

The bottom of the fifth proved to be the end of the Dons as Saddleback capitalized on some pitching problems for Santa Ana.  Barker was hit by a pitch to start the inning before Casey Worden doubled to put runners on second and third with no outs.  After Dan James grounded out, Dylan Diaz was intentionally walked to load the bases.  Ryan Fitzpatrick delivered with a double to right-center field, scoring two and giving the Gauchos a 6-0 lead.  Things went from bad to worse for Santa Ana on a wild pitch to the next batter Alex King, scoring Diaz.  If that wasn't bad enough, King then stepped up and delivered a two-run bomb to right field to give Saddleback a 9-0 lead.

Meanwhile, Aufderheide was cruising.  He pitched to the minimum through three innings and didn't allow a hit until the fifth when Frankie Nogales broke up the no-hitter with a single.  The Dons had only three runners reach third base all day as Aufderheide struck out four while walking just one in lowering his season ERA to 2.59.  He has now walked just four batters in 31.1 innings of work and with the win has likely cemented himself in the starting rotation.

Saddleback improved to 15-6 overall and 5-4 in Orange Empire Conference play with the win.  The Gauchos are one game back of both Fullerton College and Orange Coast College, tied with Cypress College and Irvine Valley College for third place.  Saddleback will open a two-game set with Cypress on Saturday on the road.  The first pitch is scheduled for 12:00 PM on Saturday before returning home to meet the Chargers again on Tuesday.