When the Saints went marching in to Pershing Park, they left with another loss – their second of the weekend in Santa Barbara. The Foresters knocked off Arroyo Seco in blowout fashion, pasting the Saints by a lopsided score of 14-3. The win was Santa Barbara’s sixth straight since a loss on July 4, as the Foresters improved their record to 22-9.
Santa Barbara scored in double digits for the fourth time in its last six outings and matched a season-high with 15 hits, as multiple ‘Sters got in on the action. The Forester bats put on a clinic, with nine of Santa Barbara’s 15 hits going for extra bases.
“This was a manager’s dream,” Foresters manager Bill Pintard said. “Our guys really hit today. If we were ever going to have a letdown it would’ve been today. It’s been hot, and we played a doubleheader yesterday.”
Surprisingly, Arroyo Seco scored the game’s first run on an RBI single in top of the first inning. That lead wouldn’t hold for long, however, as the Foresters quickly answered back with a pair of doubles from Austin Todd and Ryan Cash to tie the game at 1-1 in the bottom of the inning.
After the Foresters scored three more runs in the second inning to stretch the lead to 4-1, Spencer Steer broke the game open in the third with a bases-clearing RBI triple that made it 7-1. Steer finished the game with two hits and four RBI.
“We were just aggressive early,” Steer said. “We just looked for some fastballs early in the count and some good pitches we could do damage with. We got a lot of those pitches today and we didn’t miss them when we got them.”
After Steer’s triple, David Hamilton followed with a double to score Steer. The Foresters added one more in the inning on an error, one of six on the day by the Saints, to make it 9-1 after three innings.
Those nine early runs proved to be more than enough run support for Foresters’ starter Blair Henley. The Texas Longhorn righty pitched five innings with seven strikeouts and no walks, while allowing only a run on three hits.
Although Henley was done after five innings, the Foresters bats weren’t. Santa Barbara added three more runs in the fifth thanks to RBI from Cash, Chandler Bengston, and Evan Lee. Joey Fiske then put an exclamation mark on the Foresters’ big day with a 2-run home run in the sixth inning, his first of the summer.
“It was good to see,” Pintard said. “He had struggled to hit earlier in the year, but he’s been hitting lately and he’s been hot.”
The Saints scored two more runs in the seventh and eighth innings, but that only proved to delay the inevitable. Reliever Garrett Gayle came in to pitch the ninth inning and closed the door, sending the Saints marching back to Pasadena.
The Foresters will resume play tomorrow at 5 p.m. as they take on the Ventura Halos on the road at Ventura College.
