Rangers Prepare for the Biggest Night of Season Against Bullpups

By: Tyler Stark

Baseball fans attend games in hopes of seeing a thrilling and incredibly entertaining matchup between two good teams. That’s exactly what they got on Tuesday night. 

On April 26th, the Redwood Rangers tied the Hanford Bullpups 9-9 in a thrilling contest that was unfortunately called due to daylight. 

The first inning saw both teams start out very hot. The Rangers put three runs on the board and the Bullpups put two runs up as well. The second inning was a dominant one for the Rangers. Redwood put up 5 runs in the second, including one coming off of a home run hit by third basemen Ty Potts, ’23.
Hanford would come back with a big third inning, scoring four runs, and coming within two runs of the Ranger lead. The Bullpups would eventually tie the game at eight apiece in the fifth inning.

Hanford would then score their final run in the sixth inning, which would make the score 9-8, in their favor. The Rangers would then score their final run in the seventh inning, evening things up at 9-9.

 Neither team would score in inning number eight, and the umpires would stop the game after due to daylight.

The game showcased a great heavyweight fight. One team would have a great inning, then the other would respond with a monster inning of their own. Fans could not have asked for anything more, except for a winner of course. 

The decision was made after the game to conclude the final inning from Tuesday’s game before the start of Thursday’s final regular-season matchup between these two teams.

While it’s unfortunate that a winner didn’t come out of Tuesday’s matchup, it sets up an incredible night of baseball on Thursday.

The stakes could not be higher for Thursday night’s matchup. The Rangers are currently second in the West Yosemite League because of their prior 11-7 loss to the bullpups earlier this year. Thursday’s game will end with one of these teams firmly in control of the WYL.

Pitcher Joey Rico, ‘23 who came in for the Rangers in the 6th inning and would pitch for the remainder of the game for Redwood says it felt good to come in and help the team out, and he’s looking forward to Friday’s game.

“It was exciting to play in such a tight game. It shouldn’t have been as tight as it was, but we embraced it and gave it our all. I was disappointed but I’m excited to finish it on Thursday and play the next game as well.” 

Coming into Tuesday’s matchup, the Rangers were well aware their offense would need to be clicking on all cylinders. For the first few innings, the Rangers’ offense was doing exactly what it needed to do, A big reason for that was the home run by third baseman Ty Potts. Potts credits Redwood hitting coach Ryan Blair’s two-strike approach as a big reason for his success on Tuesday. 

“It felt awesome to help the team out in a pretty big situation like that. All credit to coach Blair for instilling an awesome 2 strike approach for our team.”

Potts also spoke on the fact that his team will be finishing the ninth inning of their previous game on Thursday.

“I think it’s gonna be a little strange playing an inning before our normally scheduled crane and I’m not happy that we didn’t get to finish our game yesterday but I think it will ultimately favor us considering Hanford wasted a lot of their pitching.”

Obviously wrapping up that ninth inning is going to be a big talking point after Thursday night ends, it’s definitely going to be interesting to see how the Rangers play In the ninth inning and what kind of effect that’ll have on the following game. The one thing that’s for certain is all of these questions will be answered Thursday night. 

Coming into Thursday’s games against Hanford, head coach Dan Hydash believes focus from the very beginning is going to be the key to victory. “We have to be focused from the first pitch Thursday. Being the visiting team, we have to find a way to put some runs on the board quickly.”

Tags: Baseball, Bullpups, rangers, Redwood, rhs, rhs baseball, tie