Las Vegas flexes muscle in baseball blowout

Before the season started, Rancho baseball coach Tom Pletsch talked about closing the gap with perennial Northeast League champion Las Vegas.

But on Friday, Las Vegas showed the Rams that their mission hasn’t yet bet accomplished as the Wildcats earned a 17-0 road win.

Las Vegas improved to 21-8 and 11-0 in the Northeast. Rancho fell to 23-6, 8-2.

The Wildcats had 19 hits, including nine in a 10-run seventh inning.

And the Wildcats did it against two of the area’s better pitchers in Rancho’s Eric Holdren and Justin Neubauer.

Holdren and Neubauer had combined for a 1.87 ERA and 152 strikeouts in 82 innings entering play on Friday. But they combined to allow 14 runs, 12 of them earned, on 16 hits in six innings. Las Vegas struck out four times.

“They have got a really good pitching staff,” Las Vegas coach Sam Thomas said. “And for us to come out and put some runs on the board, that was good for us. I thought we had a really good day at the plate.“

Though the final margin was ugly, the game didn’t start that way. Las Vegas sophomore Bryce Harper jump-started the offense in the top of the third.

Harper chopped an RBI double over the third baseman and then scored on a delayed steal to make it 2-0. Harper crept down the third-base line and broke for the plate when the catcher tossed the ball back to the pitcher.

“He runs the bases very well,” Thomas said of Harper. “He’s one of the best baserunners I’ve ever seen. He’s very aggressive on the bases. That’s just another part of his game. It makes him just a really good player.”

Harper finished 3-for-4 with three runs and two RBIs. He had two doubles and a triple.

Tanner Chauncey added three hits, three runs and two RBIs, including a pair of seventh-inning doubles, and Wes Grass was 3-for-3 with three runs and two RBIs for Las Vegas.

Starting pitcher Miguel Ortiz allowed one hit in 4 1/3 innings with six strikeouts to get the win. He took a line drive off the thumb of his pitching hand recording the first out of the third inning but retired six more batters before being replaced.

“I’m sure he was in a lot of pain, but he was pretty pumped up,” Thomas said. “I don’t think he was going to let me take him out.”

Ortiz broke the same thumb in the offseason. Thomas hopes the injury is less severe this time.

“We’ll get him checked out tonight. And if we have to amputate it, we have to amputate it,” Thomas joked.

Dillon Dove, a freshman left-hander, replaced the hard-throwing Ortiz and allowed one hit the rest of the way.

“It’s almost like listening to rock and roll on the radio and then turning it to jazz,” Thomas said of the switch from Ortiz to Dove.

“Everybody was pretty intense, and then all of a sudden Dove comes in, and it’s just smooth to the plate.”