Lady Tigers victimized by bad innings

The Los Lunas High School softball team has been its own worst enemy this season, hurting its chances of winning games by having one bad inning. It has happened several times this season, and it happened again this week — not once, but twice.

“That’s the way its been,” said Lady Tiger first-year head coach Glenn Trujillo. “Take one inning away from our last few games and we’ve played some pretty good ball. But we’ve been getting ourselves into situations we can’t get out of.”

At Rio Grande on Thursday, the Lady Tigers put themselves in a hole, giving up five runs in the second inning to stake the Ravens to a lead they would never relinquish.

Los Lunas got itself right back in the game with four runs in its next at bat to close to 5-4. But Rio built the lead back up to 8-4. The Tigers scored one run in the seventh, but the rally fell short.

Los Lunas out-hit Rio, 7-6, but committed a whopping 10 errors.

Big innings and errors have cost the Tigers in recent games. Though they’ve out-hit their opponents each of the last four games, the Lady Tigers lost three of the four.

Leading the Tigers’ offensive attack lately has been Stephanie Perea. She doubled and knocked in two runs against the Ravens and went 2 for 3 with a home run and three RBIs in Los Lunas’ 7-6 loss to Gadsden in Anthony on Tuesday.

A big inning cost them again at Gadsden, and this time it really hurt.

Los Lunas was just three outs away from recording its second district win when the Panthers rallied for six runs in the bottom of the seventh inning to steal the victory.

Los Lunas played flawless defense this time, but Ashley Herrera, who pitched all seven innings for Los Lunas, couldn’t nail down the win.

“We just didn’t play a complete game,” Trujillo said. “A couple walks, a couple hits, a couple of choices by our fielders, and pretty soon they had rallied back against us.”

Other leading hitters for Los Lunas were Brandi Giron, who was 2 for 3, including a double and a run scored, and Stephanie McIntosh, who was 1 for 2 with a triple and a run.

The loss dropped Los Lunas’ record to 1-4 in District 3-5A play. After Thursday’s loss, Los Lunas dropped to 5-10 overall.

The schedule doesn’t lighten up for Los Lunas. The Lady Tigers will host No. 1 ranked Alamogordo (12-1 overall, 3-0 in district play) at 4 p.m. on Tuesday. In fact, Los Lunas plays three of its next four games against Alamo.

“If we can play a complete game, we can play with anybody,” Trujillo said. “We’re not going to back down.”