-Blade Central Arizona College Baseball Beat

(Chandler or Gilbert-not sure) - The Coyotes of Chandler-Gilbert didn't even touch the plate in the home-and-away.

(Pause for effect)

No matter what the year, this Chandler-Gilbert baseball team has been a pesky foe for Central Arizona, but they failed to live up to that standard this weekend. Vaquero pitching did it all in back-to-back shutouts on Friday and Saturday with scores of 12-0 and 7-0.

The Friday game was a run-rule seven inning game.

"I'm not complaining but my guys need work and seven inning games limit that" said the head coach Anthony Gilich.

He didn't chuckle, but I did. The man is serious, he's got to get his pitchers some work.

"I've got guys ready to go out there, and I can't get 'em in."

What can you do when your starters are throwing shutouts. Patrick Steitz on Friday and The Tugboat on Saturday. Central relievers got three innings this weekend, giving up appriximately zero runs while walking zero. The three lottery winners that got on the hill were Jasiah George, Jack Seward, and Michael Trausch.

Each pitcher getting better as the year rolls on, but this coaching staff has a play-off mentality, and it's not quick enough. You just love as fans, the fact that, frankly, Central Arizona's big problem now is the staff sweating it out how they're going to get their other good pitchers in.

"Yeah, we have other things too that we're working on" continued Gilich.

"Gotta clean up some defensive play. And we have so many players that can play lots of positions, we're still trying to settle that defense down."

In the annual Saturday night game with CGCC, it was scoreless with Matt Wilkinson starting until the top of the fifth inning when Mario Bejaraano got it all started with that classic at-bat, runners on, and after fighting and fouling off a bunch of pitches, he ripped one up the middle to get Central their first run.Central went on to score five more runs in the inning to go to the bottom of the fifth with a 6-0 lead.

Wilkinson threw seven giving up one single. He struck out eleven batters and won his sixth game. The final was 7-0.

"Ashtin Webb had two big doubles there" said Gilich.

"We have a lot of good hitters up and down the lineup" he continued.

Pitchers too. The team has a ridiculous ERA of 2.34 and the staff has five shutouts so far this year.

"JoJo (JoJo Howie the Central pitchers coach) has really done this amazing job of little tweaks in our guys. He had Steitz dipping a little lower with his pitch release point and it has really helped." Steitz threw six scoreless on Friday, proving that.

Tyrese Johnson doubled in two runs hitting leadoff and Luke Thiele had yet two more hits to raise his team-leading average to .431.

So that is eleven wins in a row and Central sweeps the week by winning all three.

The vaquero conference record is now 14-2 and they have a four-game lead over second place South Mountain Community College.