Carson Blue Jays play giveaway in loss to Sparks Raiders

If Bryan Manoukian wasn’t already bald, he wouldn’t have had any hair after Friday night’s summer baseball game against the Sparks Raiders.

Manoukian watched his team give out a total of 18 free bases – seven errors, two hit batters, four walks, three wild pitches and two passed balls – in a 12-6 loss at Ron McNutt Field.

Carson is now 2-2 going into tournament play today against the Galena Cubs at 11:30 a.m. and the Sun Devils at 2 p.m. Both games will be played at Wooster High School.

“You can’t have more errors than hits and expect to win,” Manoukian said after the loss. “We had three runs scored on passed balls or wild pitches. The numbers speak to the kind of game we had.

“The experience level doesn’t matter. We made errors on routine groundballs. We didn’t play baseball. We made a lot of mistakes, and they capitalized on a lot of them. If everybody isn’t going to come out and play, we’ll find 9 or 10 that want to.”

What was frustrating is Carson started the game with a three-run first inning, wiping out a 1-0 deficit.

Kahle Good had a run-scoring single and Landon Truesdale delivered the first of two sacrifice flies. The other run scored on an error.

It was downhill from there. Sparks scored two in the third to tie the game at 3 and one in the fourth to take a 4-3 lead, both surges coming against starter Colby Zemp.

The first run of the inning had to frustrate Manoukian a bit. Carson had the infield in and Scott Cameron hit a groundball right to Jared Barnard at short. He looked at home but didn’t throw, allowing Colton Domingues to score to make it 3-2. Tanner Clabaugh, who had reached on a single, scored on a wild pitch to tie the game.

A two-out error by Kyle Glanzmann allowed the Raiders to take a 4-3 lead in the top of the fourth.

The Blue Jays took their last lead of the night when they scored two runs on one hit. Truesdale led off with a double and moved to third when Teigen Key’s bunt was mishandled. With runners at first and third, Key broke for second, and the throw went into centerfield allowing Truesdale to score.

Key also scored on the play when the Raiders made a wild throw once the ball got back into the infield.

It went downhill from there, as Reed scored four in the fifth and four in the sixth. In the sixth, Reed had one hit, two walks and a hit batter plus a wild pitch. In the sixth, Reed had two hits, but Carson had three errors.

Carson only had one run in that same span, that coming in the fifth when Abel Carter singled and eventually scored on a sacrifice fly by Truesdale. The inning could have been bigger, but Zemp’s liner back at the pitcher was caught with the bases loaded.

NOTES: Manoukian said he didn’t know who was going to start against Galena. He admitted pitchers are going to have to stay out there longer than normal because the team is playing two games today and two on Sunday… Carter and Truesdale were the only players who had more than one hit.