Thursday’s Mountain Pass League game went much like Banning’s baseball season.
The Broncos were game, they played well at times and a victory was there for the taking.
But Banning couldn’t finish it off and lost, 4-2, to visiting Rim of the World.
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The loss paints a bleak picture for the Broncos, who with four games remaining in the regular season, need plenty of help to garner a postseason berth.
“I want to stay positive,” Banning coach Chris Reyes said. “You can’t let the wins be too high and you can’t let the losses be too low. We just have to keep trying and see how the season ends up.”
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A win could have forced a tie at fourth place in the MPL standings with ROW, which would have inched the Broncos toward third place and put them in place for an at-large playoff spot.
Banning (3-8, 7-13) has to play for pride, as coaches say. The Broncos play winless Jurupa Hills next week and second place Rubidoux the following week.
“I hate to say it’s over,” Reyes said. “We still want to play hard.”
ROW took a 2-0 lead in their half of the first but Banning made it a 2-1 game when Miguel Medrano singled in Juan Gomez. Then, with ROW leading 3-1 in the third, Banning made it 3-2 when Medrano singled in Francisco Noriega.
Then the Broncos went down in order the last four innings.
Banning had won back-to-back games going into Thursday’s loss, this after losing five straight.
“We were feeling pretty good,” said Reyes, who watched as his team defeated Notre Dame and this same Rim team. “It was probably the best games we had all season. We really put the bat on the ball.”
Banning struggled with fielding the ball on Thursday.
“We come in and gave up unearned runs,” Reyes said. “We were chasing them uphill the whole game.”
