Rios throws no-hit shutout

EPHRATA — River Dogs starter Jordan Rios leaned a little to his right, trying to will a called third strike on a 3-2 pitch to Gunner Falstad in the top of the second inning of Thursday night's game at Johnson-O'Brien Stadium.

The Columbia Basin right-hander saw his perfect game vanish with the pitch when Falstad drew the full-count walk, but Rios was perfect in every way in the opening game of the High Desert Baseball Classic.

He threw just 41 pitches in a no-hit, shutout to beat the Basin Rockhounds 14-0 in five innings.

The River Dogs (16-5) opened the High Desert Classic on a high note with Rios' no-hitter, scoring 14 runs on 13 hits of their own.

“I've been focusing on pitching to contact and not trying to strike everybody out,” said Rios, who banks on a two-seam and four-seam fastball. “Today, I throwing a lot of fastballs to see if I could just go right after them. I felt pretty confident.”

Rios got the win against the Wenatchee Blue last week at the Apple Valley 17 Youth Tournament last week in Wenatchee. Thursday night was his second consecutive strong start.

“He's only walked one guy in the last two games, so he's throwing a lot of strikes,” River Dogs skipper Randy Boruff said. “We don't have an overpowering pitcher on this staff, but they're throwing strikes and that's what we want. I feel a lot better now that we're hitting the ball.”

Rios got stronger as the game went on and the River Dogs bats were active from the get-go, turning a 3-0 lead into seven with a four-run second inning. Zac Berryman drove in two runs in the four-hit, four-run inning for the River Dogs, who played in the national championship game in last year's Senior Babe Ruth World Series.

Kaeden Murphy ripped an RBI double in the third and Nic Lopez drove in a run for Columbia Basin, which blew the thing wide open with seven runs on seven hits in the bottom half of the third.

“You play against the game of baseball and not necessarily your opponents,” Boruff said. “You want quality at-bats, quality pitching. We tell the kids to work on their game, make the basic plays and see where they can improve.”

Murphy was the starter in last year's national championship game against Alabama. He is one of five 18-year-olds on the club. He's swinging the bat pretty good, including the RBI double.

“We started the season slow, but we're swinging it better,” Murphy said. “I'm swinging better. We're a young team and we're starting to play better together with experience.”

Joe Taylor finished the game 3-for-4 with two RBIs. Berryman was also 3-4 and drove in three runs. Murphy, Lopez and Duncan Favor all drove in a run.

The Columbia Basin River Dogs play again at 3 p.m. on Friday at Johnson-O'Brien Stadium.