Red Raiders fall to Walla Walla

WARDEN — With districts beginning at the end of the week, the Othello Red Raiders wrapped up their regular season with a game against Walla Walla on Tuesday, falling to the Bruins 14-6 at Warden High School.

The game, originally scheduled as a doubleheader, was played as a nine-inning standalone game due to a lack of umpires.

“We knew we had districts coming up this weekend, so we were trying to get certain guys some work and get them some innings on the mound,” head coach Sonny Garza said. “We had a gameplan as far as that goes, but we came out on the other side of the win column. The kids still played well — we had one rough inning.”

Following Walla Walla taking a 2-0 lead in the top of the first inning, the Red Raiders tied the ballgame in the bottom of the first with an RBI from shortstop Sonny Salazar and left fielder Zayvier Olazcon scoring off a passed ball. After a scoreless second inning, Walla Walla took the lead for good with a nine-run top of the third, picking up eight hits in the inning and scoring off of two Red Raider errors.

“We had one pretty big error where we could have had the guy at home, and after that, it kind of snowballed,” Garza said. “Something like that that’s kind of small hurts the morale, so it was a little hard to get over that hump.”

Othello held the Bruins to three runs in the remaining six innings, leaving some positive takeaways.

“The rest of the innings after that, we looked really good,” Garza said. “Our defense came around, we made plays, we threw strikes and we were able to get guys out. It was really just that little hiccup that we had there.”

Salazar paced the Red Raiders at the plate, collecting three hits and driving in two runs, both of which led the team. Second baseman Aaden Montes and center fielder Kal-El Ozuna both had multi-hit evenings as well.

“Sonny (Salazar), he hit really well for us today — Montes, Kal-El Ozuna (too),” Garza said. “We feel really good about the guys that we have going into this weekend.”

Othello opens their district tournament Friday in Yakima and will face off against the Bruins again. The winner advances to the AA State Tournament, which is held in Spokane at the end of the month, while the loser will play a loser-out game Saturday.

“We’re just going to try to keep doing the things that we’ve been doing,” Garza said. “I feel they’ve been working really well for us. Just continuing to take a lot of ground balls and throwing the ball across the diamond — that seems to be the one thing that we’ve got to continue to work on.”

Both teams finished second in their respective leagues during the regular season. Garza said Tuesday’s game allowed Othello to get a peak at Walla Walla before they meet in districts at Parker Field in Yakima on Friday.

“We saw they have three, four good hitters, they showed some speed on the bases,” Garza said. “We’ve got to really capitalize on those opportunities where we do a chance to get them out, that way they don’t get on the bases.”

Ian Bivona may be reached at ibivona@columbiabasinherald.com.  

Box score

WAL: 2-0-9-0-2-0-0-1-0 14
OTH: 2-0-2-1-1-0-0-0-0 6

    Othello center fielder Kal-El Ozuna was one of three Red Raiders who picked up multiple hits in Tuesday’s game against Walla Walla.