Rosemont Baseball Closes Season with Win over Burbank

Despite some defensive struggles, the varsity baseball team relied on its offensive to earn a comfortable 13-5 victory over Luther Burbank Friday at Rosemont High School.

With this game being the last of the regular season for Rosemont, the Wolverines finish the regular season 12-2 in second place behind Metro League winner McClatchy (13-1). McClatchy’s only loss of its season came from a 5-1 home loss to Rosemont on March 31.

Rosemont will advance to the playoffs and will wait to see who they will face in the first round on May 20.

During Friday's game, Rosemont played as the away team on their own home field because Burbank’s field is under construction.

Burbank scored the first run in the bottom of the first inning, but Rosemont answered back in the top of the second with a two-run double by outfielder Lamar Henderson to give Rosemont an early 2-1 lead.

The Wolverines then had a four-run inning in the top of the fifth that included a sacrifice fly ball by first baseman Dustin Mulhern that scored two runs.

In the bottom of the fifth, the Titans began to put pressure on the Wolverines and had a four-run inning of their own, decreasing their deficit to 6-5.

Rosemont would then score seven runs during the last two innings of the game and not allow any more runs to secure a season-ending victory for the Wolverines.

Head coach Paul Martinez said completing routine defensive plays has been an issue for the team throughout the season and the team needs to continue to practice to combat that problem.

“We just didn’t do a real good job taking care of the baseball. Our left-side defense struggled; that was disappointing,” Martinez said. “I thought our pitching was pretty good today. It was consistent, we were getting the ball down and we were getting plenty of opportunities to get outs–we just weren’t taking care of the ball real well.” 

Martinez did credit his team’s offensive and said that timely hits helped secure a victory for Rosemont.

“Late in the game though, our guys were doing a good job with situational hitting, the time of the hits and they were able to get our lead back to a comfortable margin,” Martinez said.

Mulhern said that the team’s offense went well and was a big factor in the win despite the struggling defense.

“Our offense was on today, but our defense was a little shaky today like its been before. [We're] going to get better by the playoffs, but our offense was real good today,” Mulhern said. “We need to work on completing routine plays, that’s for sure. The transfer from getting the ball in-hand and what goes on in between then.”

With the team going into the playoffs, outfielder Alex Kral said Wolverines' goal is to focus on playing a good game and nothing else.

“When we play, we don’t accomplish to win–we just want to play good and when we play good, we know we’ll win,” Kral said.