Pitching trio leads Blue Jays to victory

The McQueen Outlaws made a plethora of errors, and the Carson Blue Jays made them pay for every mistake.

The Blue Jays stretched their win streak to three with a 6-0 win Wednesday night behind the pitching of Jared Barnard, Ben Nelson and Kyle Glanzmann at Ron McNutt Field.

Carson improved to 5-4 heading into Friday night’s home contest (8 p.m.) against the Douglas Ducks. Carson hasn’t lost since losing two games on Saturday at the Reno Memorial tournament.

“McQueen is fielding a young team and they made some mistakes, and we took advantage of them,” Carson coach Bryan Manoukian said. “It was a lot of young hitters against three varsity pitchers. I was impressed with how they (McQueen) played.

“It was essentially a bullpen session for Jared, Ben and Kyle. They are throwing Sunday in the all-star game. I didn’t want to throw any of them on Friday (because of that).”

Barnard allowed one run in two innings, and Nelson allowed three baserunners in his three innings. Glanzmann allowed two baserunners. The trio threw 98 pitches, combining for nine strikeouts and two walks.

McQueen made six errors that led to all of Carson’s runs.

The string of errors started in the first inning when Abel Carter reached on an Austin Parry error. Carter moved to third on Colby Zemp’s single. Zemp stole second, putting two runners in scoring position. Kahle Good followed with a groundball to short. Parry caught Zemp off second but that allowed Carter to score.

The errors continued in the second when Nelson hit a one-out double, moved to third when Joe Tonino’s groundball was misplayed, and scored on a single by Glanzmann. Another error and a walk loaded the bases before Zemp grounded into a force out.

The big explosion came in the third when a two-out error led to four unearned runs.

Good singled, but was doubled off first after Parry caught Landon Truesdale’s line drive, and Good was caught in no man’s land.

Barnard was safe on an error. Teigen Key followed with a run-scoring double to left-centerfield and moved to third on Nelson’s single. Josh Ingram followed with a run-scoring double and Tonino capped the barrage with a two-run single to right to make it 6-0.

The Blue Jays managed just one hit over the final three innings, but couldn’t come up with a key hit to extend the lead.

Nelson was the only Carson player with more than one hit.

“We’re progressing, moving in the right direction,” Manoukian said.