The Colorado Mesa baseball team opened a four-game series against New Mexico Highlands with a 5-0 win.
In a game that was delayed more than an hour due to lightning, manager Chris Hanks stuck with Kyle Leahy. The sophomore right-hander struck out 15 batters en route to his conference-leading sixth win. Leahy went eight strong innings throwing 116 pitches and reducing his ERA to 1.02.
“If you keep it under an hour you’re probably okay. It’s like a really long inning. He was in the clubhouse, he stayed warm moving around. He’s in really terrific shape,” Hanks said.
“Mostly just fastballs were an out pitch. I mean I mixed in some other stuff, just enough to make the fastball look faster,” Leahy said.
Lightning delayed the game in the third inning for just over an hour. Both teams couldn’t get anything going before then and it was the Mavericks who struck first.
After a leadoff double from Garrett Ball in the fifth inning setup the first run of the night. After PJ Gonzalez advanced Ball to third, Lane LaCrone came up with a two-out single that gave the Colorado Mesa their first lead.
That one run was enough for Leahy as he only surrendered two hits after the second inning.
“Coming into today, skip told us they have the best, statistically the best numbers in the league. I just tried to do what I could to limit that,” Leahy said.
The Mavericks broke the game open in the eighth inning when LaCrone singled in two more runs. Shortstop Zach McLeod hit a two-run homer and catcher Kyle Serrano added a solo shot two batters later.
Tyler Day came in for the ninth inning and sent the Cowboys down 1-2-3 with three strikeouts to end the game.
The Cowboys starting pitcher Dakota Pacheco went seven innings while surrendering four earned runs on six hits.
The two teams will play a doubleheader Saturday afternoon with game one being pushed back for a start time of 2:00 p.m. Chris Ramirez and JR McDermott will be the starters for tomorrow’s games.
The Mavericks improved to 19-8 (11-2 RMAC) while the Cowboys fell to 10-18 (6-10 RMAC).
