The Jaguars baseball team got off to a rough start losing 11 of their first 13 games.
But they were able to recover and put themselves in position for a playoff berth by winning their final 13 games. Unfortunately, their winning streak ended when they lost a one-game playoff to L.A. Mission by a score of 7-1.
Head coach Jay Martel said the early stretch of the season prepared them for the rest of the season.
“Our schedule was pretty tough early on,” Martel said. “We’re so far south, when we travel, we travel to L.A, and L.A is the Orange Empire which is the number one conference in the state of California.”
Sophomore pitcher and infielder Jorge Martinez believes the out-of-conference schedule prepared the team for conference play. “We played tough teams,” Martinez said. “I think that prepared us and that’s why we’re doing better in conference than we did in the preseason.”
The driving force behind the team’s victories were strong outings from the bullpen and quality fielding. Sophomore pitcher Justin Zamora believes the team’s tough practice schedule contributes to their strong defense and competitive hunger.
“We take a lot of groundballs,” Zamora said “We’ll play catch, warm up, we’ll take groundballs and turn them into plays, and PFP’s (Pitchers Fielding Practice) before we go into hitting.”
Martel said the pitching has been a key to the team’s success.
“The difference between non-conference and conference is our pitching has been really good, a couple guys have thrown really well.” Martel said.
The Jaguars got off to a quick start, winning their first four games in conference, before losing two key series to fellow top PCAC contenders San Diego Mesa and Palomar College.
“The biggest thing we worked on — on the offensive side was to be more aggressive early in the count, trying to get fastballs to hit, try to not fall behind,” Martel said. “We have a young club, but that’s no excuse, we didn’t play very well, we haven’t hit very well.”
Reyes said the the team used the stretch-run before the playoffs to focus on decreasing mental errors and getting more confident at the plate.
“We are getting back into it mentally, focus on batting practices, seeing the ball, and timing up,” Reyes said. “Even though we are young, we might have some errors, that’s what we practice a lot on, making sure we have the routines done.”
Martel said the team had to be more aggressive at the plate to find success.
“We have to be more competitive, be more hungry,” Martel said. “If we can hit, if we can hit with two outs, that’s huge. If we can do that in the next games we can be right there.”
Martinez said their early success went to their heads and cost them down the stretch.
“We got confident,” Martinez said. “We relaxed and thought we were going to keep on winning. We’re struggling but now we’re fighting back.”
Zamora said the team came into their own during conference play.
“We were trying to find who we were as a team,” he said. “We didn’t really bond. We caught a wave as soon as we hit conference.”
The Jaguars showed that even with a bumpy start they could finish strong and demonstrate they were made of fight and determination.
