River Dogs baseball places third in Montana

HELENA, Mont. — The River Dogs got off to a rough start with a 5-3 loss to Bozeman in the opening game of the Keith Sell Invitational, but then ran off four-straight wins to place third in the tournament.

“We left a lot of runners on base — didn’t get any clutch hits,” coach Randy Boruff said. “The loss ended up keeping us out of the championship game.”

The River Dogs and Bozeman were both 3-1 through four games in pool play, and the team from Ephrata had given up up fewer runs overall on the tournament, but because of the loss, Bozeman had the tiebreaker and got the nod to play for all the marbles.

The River Dogs polished off Bitterroot 5-1 in Game 2, and then rallied from a big deficit to get past the Helena Senators in Game 3.

“We were down 7-0 — played a bad couple of innings offensively and defensively,” Boruff said. “We then went on to outscore them 10-1 to pull out a 10-8 win.”

The River Dogs then shutout Calgary 9-0 on a complete game thee-hit effort from Moses Lake’s Jordan Rios to set up a third-place showdown with Bitterroot, whom they dominated 13-2.

“We put six runs on the board in the first inning,” Boruff said. “The top of our order Joe Taylor, Zac Berryman, Dakota Fingar and Duncan Favor really produced for us. Arcenio Martinez and Tristan Garland had some timely hits as well.”

Othello’s Abel Gomez drove in two runs in the ball game.

The River Dogs, now at 25-7 on the season, are back on the diamond Wednesday in Yakima for the Firecracker Invitational.

“We’re going to have our hands full in this one,” Boruff said. “We’re in a tough bracket — they’ve loaded all the tough teams together. We’ll be going up against the Rifer City A’s, Pepsi Pak and NW Premier out of Coeur d Alene”