Moorpark College won an offensive battle against the Western Conference North Champion Cuesta College, by a final score of 14-11.
With the win Moorpark College moves to 10-14 in conference and 17-22 overall, while Cuesta falls to 19-6 and 29-14. Despite the loss, Cuesta has still locked up first place in the WSC North.
Moorpark College came out aggressive right from the beginning. In the bottom of the first inning, Moorpark batted around and scored six runs off of the normally dominating Cuesta starting pitcher Todd Simko. Simko was very wild from the beginning, walking a lot of batters and created easy opportunities for the Moorpark offense. Along with the lack of efficiency from Simko, his defense made a few very uncharacteristic errors, which allowed a couple of more runs to score in the bottom of the first. Cuesta was not the usual sharp and mistake free team during the outing.
Despite an early 6-0 lead for Moorpark, the high octane offense of Cuesta would bring them back to tie the game up at seven. Moorpark starting pitcher Ryan Donahoe looked dominate in the first two innings, doing an especially good job keeping Cuesta batters off balance. Part of that success came from getting ahead of batters. In the third inning, Donahoe suddenly could not find the strike zone. Donahoe would end up going only 2 1/3 innings. As a result of being wild and falling behind batters, Cuesta would respond with a four run third, and a two run fourth. The big blow would come in the top of the third from Cuesta’s power hitting left fielder Brad Decater, who hit a huge three-run home run for Cuesta.
However, Moorpark College would respond with more runs off of Cuesta’s shaky bullpen. Moorpark’s bullpen would come up big containing Cuesta as much as they possibly could. Jimmy Auger did a solid job, with the aid of some stellar defensive plays. The bottom of the ninth got shaky for Moorpark College, but they were able to finally shut down the pesky Cuesta Cougars.
Moorpark College Head Coach Mario Porto was happy to see the execution he expects from his team, especially against a team like Cuesta.
“We came out and executed” said Porto “We only had one bad inning at the end.”
Everyone on the Moorpark College offense contributed to the 14 runs they scored against Cuesta. However, a few came up big in multiple innings for the team.
Third baseman and Sonoma State recruit Daniel Nimoy went 3-4 with two RBI’s, along with leadoff hitter and Scholar Athlete of the Year John Villareal getting on base and going 2-4, and left fielder Mario Landeros continuing his clutch hitting, going 4-5 with three RBI’s.
Nimoy just wanted to find his pitch and come through for his team, and also just told his team to stay calm when things looked to be falling apart in the ninth inninig.
“Since I have been struggling a little, I was looking to be aggressive” said Nimoy. “I was trying to have a short and quick swing, and I was also trying to go the other way.” When Cuesta started rallying in the bottom of the ninth inning, Nimoy displayed his veteran leadership. “I told everyone to relax and breath. It was important to calm down, and to try and slow the game down.”
Left fielder Mario Landeros arguably had the biggest impact on his team today. He did not just contribute offensively, but also had a big defensive sliding catch in left field to prevent Cuesta from scoring even more runs.
“Cuesta made mistakes they usually do not make” said Landeros. “They left the ball up and I took advantage.”
After this big win Moorpark College will end their season tomorrow at home against Ventura College, while Cuesta will get ready and wait to find out who their first round opponent will be in the playoffs.
