Ventura Stretches Shutout Streak to 4 : Baseball: Cougars blank Rio Mesa, 7-0, and have posted 32 scoreless innings in a row.

Top of the seventh. One out. Runner at second.

Ventura High baseball Coach Dan Smith strides out to the mound to summon a relief pitcher to protect. . . .

A seven-run lead?

Actually, after right-hander Robert Verstraeten retired two Rio Mesa hitters to finish off a 7-0 Channel League victory Tuesday at Ventura, what he really had protected was the Cougars’ four-game shutout streak.

“Everything is going right,” said right-hander Jeremy Pierce, who pitched the first 6 1/3 innings. “We’ve got our hitting going and our defense is really good.”

But pitching is what has carried the Cougars (7-1, 4-0). Ventura has given up only nine runs in eight games. Five of those runs were unearned and came in one inning in a season-opening loss to Alemany.

Ventura, using a rotation of Pierce (4-0) and Verstraeten, has not given up a run since the third inning against Buena on March 14, a streak of 32 consecutive zeros.

“They make it so easy,” Ventura catcher Monty Moritz said of his pitchers. “They are just throwing fastballs and letting the defense do the work.”

The defense helped Pierce off the hook several times Tuesday in what was a tight game until Ventura exploded for six unearned runs in the sixth.

Rio Mesa (5-4, 2-2) had runners at first and second with none out in the first, but Moritz threw out Eric Flores trying to steal third, ending the rally.

In the second inning, Ventura first baseman Shawn Wenger snagged a line drive with two out and runners at first and third. In the third inning, Ventura third baseman Marcos Tovar reached to grab a line drive, starting an inning-ending double play.

“Our pitching has been great, but our infield defense has been solid,” Smith said. “They’re taking care of the ball.”

The best play of the game, though, was a diving catch by Cougar right fielder Chad Anderson on a ball hit by Chad Snyder leading off the seventh.

“Rio Mesa had some chances to score, but every time they got in position (Pierce) shut the door,” Smith said.

Pierce gave up six hits, walked two and struck out five.

Verstraeten, who pitched a no-hitter Friday in his last start, retired both batters he faced, including a game-ending strikeout of Flores, Rio Mesa’s best hiTter.

Ventura’s best hitter Tuesday was Moritz, who had three of the Cougars’ 13 hits. Pierce, Wenger and Tovar each had two hits. The biggest was Moritz’s one-out triple in the third inning, setting up Ventura’s first run.

Moritz drove a hanging curve ball deep to right field, where Albert Ambriz made a diving attempt, but the ball glanced off his glove and hit the fence. Pierce then drove in Moritz with a double.

The Cougars clung to that 1-0 lead, with Rio Mesa left-hander Richard Soliz (2-1) matching Pierce almost zero-for-zero, until a disastrous sixth.

Ventura had a runner at first with two out when Spartan first baseman Vince Roman made the first of his three errors in the inning. All three were dropped throws that would have been outs. Catcher Steve Arneson added an error in the inning, which ended after 11 batters came to the plate and six scored.

“We’re just going to have to try to forget about the bottom of the sixth,” Rio Mesa Coach Richard Duran said. “But we didn’t score any runs anyway, so it didn’t matter.”