RiverDogs survive late scare to win

EPHRATA - A nice start led to a so-so finish but in the end the Columbia Basin RiverDogs held on for a 7-5 win last night against Wenatchee in Babe Ruth baseball at Johnson-O'Brien Stadium.

The RiverDogs (5-2), who are preparing for the Central Washington Baseball Classic this weekend, led 7-0 after four innings but then the offense slowed down and their guests got their bats going to make things a tad bit more interesting than they should have been according to manager Randy Boruff.

"We put it in cruise control and we did not particularly hit the ball well even in the whole game," Boruff said. "We weren't very disciplined. It was easily a game we could have scored five or six more runs in."

Yet, score they did aplenty in the early going as the RiverDogs brought home all their runs in the first four innings.

They scored two runs in the first inning, one in the next two frames, and wrapped up their attack with a three-run output in the fourth inning.

It also didn't hurt that Luke Valdez (Moses Lake High School) started on the mound and performed extremely well, throwing five innings of shut out baseball.

"We got a good pitching performance out of Luke," Boruff said. "He threw strikes and the defense played well behind him."

Brent Lopez pitched the final four innings in relief and did well but had to battle threw some of his teammates' fielding miscues in the game's latter stages.

"They had a couple of timely hits and we had some errors," Boruff said. "We only walked one guy tonight, but both teams had four errors."

Wenatchee scored at least one run in each of the last four innings and had two in their final at-bat before the RiverDogs could close things out.

Josh Snider (Ephrata High School) and Chris Walker (Naches Valley) each had two hits apiece to lead the team's ten-hit attack. Walker also finished with three RBI.

As the team readies itself for this weekend's tournament, which begins today with a 5:30 p.m. game against Pinnacle Baseball at Big Bend CC, Boruff and his coaching staff are still trying to get the proper pieces in place.

"I still think we are very athletic and our catching has been terrific between Matt Noyola and C.J. Garza," Boruff said. "We haven't had any passed balls in any of the seven games. Our outfield play hasn't been good though so we are looking to stabilize our outfield. We have some athletes and we have to decide who is going to be playing where."