Mustangs halted by dominant pitching

Posted

NIXON — The Mustangs took their first district loss of the season Friday as they took on Luling’s great pitching that resulted in the 6-0 decision.

Luling’s Jarred Zumwalt was the biggest factor in their win over Nixon-Smiley as the Mustangs combined to strike out 16 times in the seven-inning game.

“That kid is good,” Mustangs’ head coach Bobby Newman said of Zumwalt. “We just came in against good pitching tonight, you got to tip your hat to him. He did a good job.”

Rodrigo Acevedo took the loss for the Mustangs as he pitched four innings, getting two strikeouts while giving up three runs, just one earned, two walks and two hits.

Ricky Flores came in for relief, going three innings and striking out one batter while giving up three runs, one earned, two walks and two hits.

“[Losing] 6-0 is not indicative of how our pitchers threw tonight,” Newman noted. “But we’ll get back to work on Monday.”

After giving up a run in the first, Luling added another one in the third and two more in the fifth and seventh inning to get to six runs.

In the first two games, the Mustangs relied on their strong pitching as well as “putting balls in play” to force their opponents’ to make plays themselves.

“We had at least every one of [our batters] strike out once,” Newman said. “[Luling] didn’t have to make a ton of plays out there tonight.”

“At this level, you put balls in play, good things could happen.”

Joey Mendez and Ricky Flores were the lone hitters Friday with Flores going 1-of-2 with a single and Mendez 1-of-2 with a double in the fifth inning.

“Just didn’t have a lot of base runners,” Newman said.

Defensively, the Mustangs weren’t as sound as they were in the past, coming away with five errors for the night.

“There were a lot of plays we didn’t made that we should have made,” Newman admitted.

Nonetheless, the Mustangs’ head coach believes his team is in good shape. Despite coming against a big-time pitcher in Zumwalt while making those errors on the defensive half of innings, Newman knows what his team is capable of.

“We’ve been playing good defense, putting the ball in play,” Newman recounted. “Our first two district games we had pretty dominant pitching on our part and we threw the ball well enough tonight.”

“We got to come back Monday and get back to work and see what happens.”

Nixon-Smiley will take on Goliad today on the road, with first pitch scheduled at 7 p.m.

Comments