The Pierce College baseball team played a scrimmage against the Southern California Cardinals scout team on Sept. 27 leading 6-5 in an eight inning game.
With the sport being out of season the men’s team was playing as the Pierce College Bulls against the SoCal Cardinals, a team designed to help amateur athletes get into college and professional ranks.
The Bulls are allowed to play at least 10 opponent games. This scrimmage was a chance for the coaching staff to test new pitchers. Scheduled for two games and total of 14 innings it gave the Bulls a chance to throw a different pitcher each inning.
With nearly 50 players on the roster this game was an opportunity to make some evaluations.
“We’re going to throw 14 different pitchers,” assistant coach Bill Picketts said.
With the first three innings of the game no runs were scored and there were several pitchers on and off the mound the Bulls were able to throw and look at three different pitchers.
“We do have a lot of guys returning so we’re looking for leadership,” coach John Bushart said.
With only a few of the 50 named players on the roster being sophomores the coaching staff was looking for the returning players to show some leadership and hoping to get a better idea of what areas need work, according to Bushart.
“It’ll be a good opportunity for us to see how they play,” Bushart said.
This scrimmage was a way for the coaches to see the player’s strengths and areas that may need improvement.
At the top of the fourth the Cardinals managed to make three runs on the Bulls taking a 3-0 lead.
Many pitchers couldn’t quite make the angle letting several players for the Cardinals walk to first. To make sure that every batter would get a chance to make contact they would have a runner stand on base on the fourth ball.
With no runs scoring in the fourth and fifth innings the Bulls came through making two runs at the bottom of the sixth cutting the Cardinals lead to 4-2.
By the seventh inning the Bulls managed to get in three runs taking the lead for a 5-4 score against the Cardinals.
Cardinals managed to come up in the bottom of the seventh making the score 5-5.
Although they were scheduled for only seven innings both teams agreed to go for one more inning because they wanted to throw in an extra pitcher.
By the end of the eighth the Bulls managed to take the game with a 6-5 lead against the Cardinals.
“We’re using this to see what we can do to improve,” freshman Tanner Kruse said.
With several different pitchers thrown the coaches and team were able to assess areas that would concentrate on during practice.
“They’ll see what they can improve on, and how we can compete,” Kruse said.
With the use of wooden bats throughout the game one major oddity of the game was the number of bats broken. In the second inning the Cardinal’s Tommy Turner was one of the first to break his bat.
“Weirdest thing I’ve ever seen was 10 broken bats in a seven inning game,” Kruse said.
The next game for the Bulls will be today against the Cubs scout team at Pierce College.
