Baseball unable to defeat Culver City, losing 0-3

Ryan Ulrich
Staff Writer

On Wednesday, the boys baseball team faced off against Culver City High School. The Mustangs were unable to come out with a win and lost with a final score of 0-3.

In the first inning, Costa started out on defense. With a combination of Senior Michael Rumpp’s pitching and the defense by outfielders, the first three players for Culver city got out with one strikeout and two tags. In the bottom of the first, center field junior Reese Alexiades, senior right field Jackson Michalski, and senior first baseman Dylan Tyrer all made contact with the ball but were tagged out.

“We could’ve had a better line drive approach,” junior shortstop Will Proctor said. “We didn’t hit as well as we would have liked because the wind was blowing and they had a good pitcher.”

In the top of the second inning, Rumpp was able to strike out one player and three outs were accomplished when junior second baseman Zack Chan caught a hard driven grounder and tossed it to Tyrer for the out. In the bottom of the second, after two outs, junior pitcher Trevor Franklin was able to make it to second and after a double from Chan, two bases were loaded when Costa struck out making it the third inning with no score.

“We needed to focus more,” senior pitcher Miles Kluth said. “If we stopped their offense we could have one.”

In the third inning, neither team made any runs and Costa tagged out the first three Culver City players at bat. In the bottom of the third inning, Alexiades grounded a ball out to the shortstop, Proctor grounded out to third base, and Catcher Brett Davis struck out.

“We were hitting the ball hard and were battling on defense but we didn’t have much of a plan when we went up to hit,” Kluth said. “The opposing pitcher was playing well and wasn’t going to hand us runs.”

In the fourth inning, Culver City took the lead. After one out, Culver City hit a homerun, while a double and two singles gave Culver City two more runs before they were out, making the score 3-0.

“They played great offense while we had several errors,” Proctor said. “We played well throughout with the exception of the fourth inning.”

Neither Costa nor Culver City made any runs or hits for the remainder of the game and the day ended with a final score of 3-0. The boys play again on Saturday against Bishop at Mira Costa at 11 a.m.

“As a team, we are challenging ourselves to get better every day,” Kluth said. “We all want to get better which will benefit us as the season progresses.”