One-For-Four

   The big inning spoke loudly over the weekend, as the Dodge City Community College Conquistador baseball team dropped three out of four games to the Garden City Broncbusters.
    The Conqs lost both ends of a doubleheader Sunday, falling 12-3 in the first game and 4-1 in the second.
    Garden City scored five in the second inning of game one and took a 6-2 lead into the seventh inning, where the Busters tacked on six more to put the game out of reach for Dodge in the bottom half of the inning. The Conqs left the bases loaded after filling them with no outs in the bottom of the sixth.
    "Somebody's got to step up and keep us in the ball game," said DCCC coach Phil Stephenson. "And we didn't get that out of our bullpen, and we didn't take advantage of the opportunities we had offensively, either."
    The key inning of game two was the top of the third, in which the Busters tallied three runs to spread the lead to 4-1. The Conqs scored their only run of the game in the bottom of the first, when third baseman Mike Schnedar drove in center fielder Cody Lunsford on a hard-hit double.
    The Dodge City offense couldn't get anything going against Garden City starters George Isabel in game one or Hayden Daugherty in game two.
    Cruz Sedillo took the loss for the Conqs in game one, and Jacob Hagan fell in game two as the Conq offense failed to provide the necessary run support.
    "The thing about pitching, especially in this league, is if you can throw two pitches for strikes, you're giving yourself a chance to win every time you take the field," said Garden City coach Chris Finnegan. "And I thought we did a great job of that. We pitched to contact — attacked the hitters instead of shying away."

Saturday's games
    Saturday's doubleheader against the Busters was in large part dictated by the big inning as well. Game one saw Garden City jump out to a 4-0 lead after two innings.
    Left fielder M.J. Sartin scored center fielder Ben Warner with triple down the right field line to get things started. The Busters crossed home plate three times in the opening inning.
    Shortstop Cass Via hit another rocket down the right field line in the second to score third baseman Luke Kordsmeier and put Garden up 4-0. Conq starter Stephen Leddy, who came into the game with a 4-0 record, started the game with some hangers over the plate but rallied in the middle innings and took his fifth straight win after some timely hitting.
    The Conqs got four runs of their own in the bottom of the third. Schnedar ripped a 2-RBI double to left off Garden City starter Kyle Oestereicher, and first baseman Javy Alvarado smashed his fourth long ball of the season, a moon-shot to straightaway center that drove Schnedar in and gave the Conqs a 5-4 lead.
    With two outs and facing an 0-2 count, shortstop Jorden Johnson hit a game-winning solo shot in the bottom of the sixth inning after the Busters tied the game in the top of the fifth.
    Despite hitting the clutch homer, Johnson said he was more impressed with the way Leddy clawed back into the game on the mound than anything he or his teammates were able to do at the plate.
    No Conq hitter managed more than one hit in the first game.
    "I actually got fooled on the first two pitches and on the third," Johnson said of the pitches before he hit the big fly. "But the bottom line is, we always have a good chance of winning when Leddy's on the bump. We know he's going to go out there and battle for us, and he kept us in that one."
    Reliever David Saiz saved the victory for Leddy with a 1-2-3 seventh inning.
    The big inning that was the catalyst for the Conq win in game one Saturday came back to haunt them in game two, as the Garden hung six runs on the Dodge in the top of the second and eight in the first three innings on their way to a 9-3 win.
    Garden City right fielder Andrew Phelan hit a sharp grounder to Schnedar that went for an infield single, and Johnson had trouble with a potential double-play ball two batters later that kept the inning alive for the Busters.
    Garden third baseman Luke Kordsmeier and Sartin each hit 2-RBI doubles in the inning to spur the Buster run in the game-changing second inning.
    "Their big inning was courtesy of the fact that we couldn't field in the second inning," Stephenson said. "Then we started throwing on the mound instead of making pitches, and that combination can be very lethal, and it was for us [Saturday]."
    The Conqs scored two runs in the fourth and one more in the fifth to stay in it, but the Busters earned the six-run win with one more insurance run in the top of the sixth on a Kordsmeier RBI-single to left field.
    The Conqs (8-11, 3-5 Jayhawk Conference) will travel to Altus, Okla., this week to take on Western Oklahoma State College in doubleheaders Wednesday and Thursday. Western Oklahoma State is ranked fourth nationally in the NJCAA's Division 2.