Caleb Roberts Mashes in Rawhide’s Second Straight Victory

LAKE ELSINORE, CA-Visalia continued to hit well in the clutch on Thursday night as the Rawhide won 7-4, their second straight game despite being outhit in both contests. Visalia had a mere three runners left on base compared to 12 for the home team Lake Elsinore.

The biggest hitter of the night was catcher Caleb Roberts, one of the team’s newest members, who had two hits for four RBIs, nearly doubling his previous career total of five. Tim Tawa also had two singles as he and Roberts were the only Rawhide batters to have multiple hits Thursday.

Both teams had an equal number of errors once again albeit not nearly as many as they had during Wednesday’s debacle of three misplays each. For a team with consistent fielding issues, getting their opponents to match them in errors, or, even rarer, having them misplay even more than they do seems to be the golden ticket to victories for Visalia.

Adrian Del Moral had one of his more solid outings with only two earned runs and one strikeout in three innings, but the decision was given to the pitcher who relieved him, Jose Alcantara, who pitched three innings of his own with four strikeouts and no earned runs. Also pitching on Thursday were David Sanchez, Eric Mendez and Alex Valdez, who combined for three innings, four strikeouts and only a single earned run. Valdez picked up his first save of the year.

The Rawhide play the Storm in game 4 of the 6 game series on Friday night at 7:05 pacific time.