Staff effort leads Glendale Angelenos to shutout

NORTHEAST GLENDALE — As the final few games of the season tick away, the Glendale Angelenos are looking to spread the work throughout their pitching staff.

They used six pitchers on Monday evening to hold the visiting Gold Coast Braves to only four hits and the Angelenos came away with a 5-0 victory in an independent summer collegiate game at Stengel Field.

“We just tried to get everybody some work,” said Glendale assistant Andres Thomas, who was dealing with a personal matter. “This time of the year everybody’s dragging, kind of tired. So we just try to make sure everybody gets some work in and not get them as tired.”

Thomas Korn and Sam Frakes combined to pitch more than half the game for Glendale (34-9), which has only seven games left to close out the season.

Korn, who started, struck out two and walked three in three innings. Frakes (2-0) hurled the next two, striking out three and allowing two hits and a walk, as the Angelenos built a 2-0 lead during that stretch.

Glendale went through four pitchers the last four innings, giving up a combined two hits and two walks.

“We have a lot of guys [on the pitching staff] and we’re all pretty solid at any point in the season,” said Frakes, who got the win. “You could put any one of us up there and all perform really well.

“We don’t really have to worry about dropping off.”

The Angelenos pounded nine hits and had a 2-0 lead over five innings. Then in the seventh, Glendale reeled off three runs against Gold Coast’s Steven Martinez, who allowed three hits and a walk in 2/3 inning.

Hector Gomez led off the inning with a walk, stole second, took third on Ruben Padilla’s base hit and scored on Scott Hong’s RBI single.

Padilla stole second and third before scoring on Ellis Whitman’s sacrifice fly. And Hong scored on Danny Casey’s RBI triple off the right-field wall.

Martinez then was plucked from the mound for O.J. Gibson, who faced Erik Suarez. Suarez’s fly out closed out the seventh inning with the Angelenos ahead, 5-0.

“I think we made our opportunities count,” said Hong, who went three for four. “Just the little things: sac flies, getting good reads on ground balls when we’re on third base with less than two outs. Stuff like that counts in a low-scoring game like this.”

Hong led off the bottom first with a single, advanced to second on a groundout and then stole third before scoring on Casey’s sacrifice fly to right field.

Still leading, 1-0, in the fifth, Padilla hit a one-out single to right before stealing second base. Hong then singled in Padilla for a 2-0 advantage.

Padilla finished two for three with two runs scored.

The Braves (5-10) mustered four hits with Joe Kelly going three for three with a stolen base. Steve Motush, second in Gold Coast’s lineup, walked three times.

Braves starting pitcher Scott Zeman struck out two and allowed two runs and four hits in five innings.