The Lethbrdige Bulls defeated the Brooks Bombers by a score of 11-6 on Thursday night at Spitz Stadium in Lethbridge. Both starting pitchers were aming their first starts of the season. Brooks sent out Jordan Otjen and the Bulls countered with Javier De Alejandro. Both teams were hoping to not have a similar result to Tuesdays game that had 57 combined runs.
Payton Matthews got the Bombers started with a standup tripple and was driven in by Kelton Phillips for the first run of the game. The bottom half would see Otjen surrender only a double and put up a zero.
De Alejandro would settle in and shut down the Bombers bats. Brooks would threten in the third but Zander Bretza would ground out to leave a pair of runneres on base. De Alejandro would continue to pound the zone and get timly defensive plays as the Bombers hit into several double plays. After Brett Griggs grounded out to end the sixth that would be all from the Bulls lefty going six innings giving up one run walking a batter and striking out eight.
Otjen would go a similar length as the Bulls were only able to get to him twice with the runs coming in the third and the fifth. Otjen was efficient while getting himself out of jams. Otjen would run into troubble in the sixth however walking the leadoff batter and surrendering a base hit. That would be all as Otjen would go five innings walking one and striking out two.
Tyson Killbreath would come in and get a ground ball that took a bad hop and hit Cash Benavidez in the chest and knocked him down. A potential double play opportunity goes wrong as the bases became loaded. Riley Pearce would single to score a pair and were both charged to Otjen. Killbreath would later come out of the game as the first out of the inning was recorded. Killian McLaughlin would enter the game and give up a base hit that scored two more. Kyle Yip would single up the middle to tack on another. A pair of wild pitches would score Kyle Yip would score. Karlin Dick would be the final runner to cross the plate as the Bulls busted the game open with a seven run inning.
The Bombers needed an answer and got the bats going. Joseph Gelpi and Payton Matthews and kelton phillips reahced base to load the bases. Jacob Gillis would hit into a fielders choice to score Gelpi and then Zander Bretza would get hit by a pitch followed by a Ned Ceklic walk for the 2nd run of the inning. Cash Benavidez would then score a pair from a base hit to cut the lead to four.
Killian McLaughlin would put up a zero in the seventh and unfortunately the Bomber bats couldnt keep the momentum going at the plate. In the bottom of the eighth Carlin Dick would hit a two run homerun to put the game out of reach as the Bombers would have the game end on a Zander Bretza strikeout followed by Kelton Phillips being caught trying to steal second. A tough pill to swallow for this group no doubt.
Brooks will be back at home friday night in the rodeo denim on denim night against the Medicine Hat Mavericks.