St. Michael’s baseball team coming together just as it did last year

St. Michael’s baseball team coming together just as it did last year at this time, sweeping visiting Taos, to move into second place in District 2-4A Santa Fe High drops a pair against visiting Clovis in 2-6A, but quality pitching by the Demons did little for their bats in the 4-0, 1-0 sweep

By Arnie Leshin 

If it appears that the current St. Michael’s baseball team resembles last year’s late push, it might be.  

It was than that the Horsemen made their way to the District 2-4A championship and all the way to the state 4A semifinals before losing to eventual champion Portales, 4-3.

Now second-year head coach Augustin Ruiz has his team on the go again  

He recently said that they haven’t really put it all together yet, but in Saturday’s 20-2 and 5-4 sweep over visiting Taos, they had their bats making the contact they’ve been waiting for, and the one-run win moved them into second place behind Robertson, which downed West Las Vegas, 4-3 in nine innings, and 16-6 in six.

St. Michael’s also advanced to 12-8 overall (5-2 in district), while the Tigers fell to third place at 4-3 and dropped to 12-9 overall.

In regard to his team not being all that healthy when it took the field, Ruiz said: “We talk to the guys about constant change and adopting to adversity, because when it hits the fan, you can do one of two things: you can fight or you can (take) flight. I used that a lot with these guys.”

Horsemen sophomore catcher Derek Roybal was solid with his bat in the doubleheader at Christian Brothers Athletic Complex, hitting three doubles, a triple, driving in five runs and scoring five times. His second-inning three-bagger in the opener brought a 13-0 lead.

He was backed by a number of good hitting despite having senior Jonah Baca sidelined with an Achilles injured suffered during a physical education class earlier in the week, and starting pitcher Sean Latham has a sore shoulder that prevented him from practicing for most of the week, and then there’s first baseman Andrew Salazar injuring his knee (a concussion) in the first inning of the opener.

But the healthy ones were raring to go. In the tight second game, they went up 5-0 behind a double from freshman Thomas Erickson and a mess of errors by the Taos outfielders. It stayed that way until the Tigers pushed across three runs against starting pitcher Erickson.

Taos had cut the lead to 5-4 in the sixth, but that’s the way it ended. Latham was surprisingly called in to relieve Erickson and shut the Tigers down.

Yes, it appears to be a replica of last season’s late charge.

At Santa Fe High, the Demons lost twice to first place Clovis, but they had good pitching but not much hitting. They fell 1-0 in the opener and 4-0 in the closer to drop to 7-10 overall and winless in six district outings. The Wildcats are now 19-3, 6-0 and in a tie with Albuquerque La Cueva for the top spot.

It was scoreless in the first game until Clovis scored in the top of the fifth  against Santa Fe High junior Manny Martinez. In game two, the visitors scored once in the third, twice in the sixth, and once in the seventh, The last time the teams played, the Demons lost 19-3 and 6-0.

Alan Schmidt had the lone Santa Fe High hit in the first game, and Martinez worked seven innings, striking out five and walking a pair. Nathan Hield finished up in relief.

In 2-5A, visiting Los Alamos swept Albuquerque Del Norte, 9-6 and 12-5, and will host first place Albuquerque Academy in a Wednesday game scheduled for 4 p.m. The Chargers are a half-game ahead of the Topers, and stayed in front by taking two at Espanola Valley, 9-0, 8-1.