SAN BENITO — The San Benito Greyhounds gave up one run in the third, two in the fourth and five in the sixth as the Weslaco East Wildcats defeated San Benito 8-3 at the Greyhounds Field on Tuesday evening.
Last season the ’Hounds graduated a whopping 13 players including star JR Gaytan, and this year a young and inexperienced squad have struggled to find it’s form.
“We just need to get back to playing the fundamentals of baseball,” said San Benito head baseball coach RamPartida said after his team’s second loss of the early District 32-6A season.
With the win the Wildcats improve to 1-1 in conference play while the Greyhounds fell to 0-2 after losses to Los Fresnos and Weslaco East.
“We’re a young team, but when you play a team like Weslaco East that hits the ball you can’t have six leadoff walks, 10 total walks and five errors,” said Partida.
“You add that in there and now it gets tough. Now the inexperience comes into play because they hit the ball and we made mistakes. We had five errors but three metal errors. We’re going to be all right but we just need to grow up fast.”
After each team scored one run a piece in the third, Weslaco East added to more in the fourth. Hector Covarrubias hit a two-run RBI double scoring Jamie Banuelos and M. Gonzalez to put the Wildcats ahead 3-1.
In the top of the sixth, the Wildcats struck again as Gonzaelz hit a two-run RBI single to extend Weslaco East’s lead to 8-1.
In the bottom of the sixth, after three consecutive walks by Weslaco East pitcher Covarrubias, Bryan Quintanilla hit a deep ball to right center field bringing in Nate Garcia and Adriel Banda to cut the score to 8-3. Unfortunately, that would be the last time the Greyhounds scored.
“The team performed well,” said Weslaco East head baseball coach Michael Brown. “We didn’t break on mistakes and we just stuck together and the outcome showed it.
“I see great expectations and it’s like I tell them if we stay together and just keep our goal focus in mind nobody can take it from us but ourselves. We just have to keep plugging away one game at a time.”
The Greyhounds host BrownsvilleRivera on Thursday at 5 p.m. and play Harlingen South next Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Hawks Field.
