Wooten Unlikely Hero for JetHawks

Call it a night of improbability in the windy high desert, but it was no mirage.

The JetHawks got a complete game from Greg Wooten, who took his 5.01 earned-run average to the mound and dominated the San Jose Giants, 3-2, in front of 5,447 at the Hangar.

Wooten (4-1), a 6-foot-7 right-hander, allowed only one hit over the last six innings in pitching a six-hitter. He retired 14 batters in a row at one point.

Yet he trailed, 2-1, until Mike Lanza’s bad-hop single that bounced off the chest of shortstop Wilson Delgado allowed James Clifford to score from second base in the bottom of the seventh.

Second baseman Chris Dean, a .171 hitter, drove home the winning run in the eighth with a double to right-center field, allowing Scott Smith to score from first.

“It’s fun to win a game like that,” Manager Dave Brundage said. “We haven’t had any one-run battlers lately.”

The JetHawks (16-15) have won two in a row after losing four in a row, mostly blowouts.

Wooten, 22, who joined the JetHawks for the second half after pitching for the Mariners’ lower-level Class A team in Wisconsin, threw 90 pitches, 70 for strikes, and was ahead in the count to 24 of the 32 batters he faced.

It was only the second nine-inning complete game for the JetHawks in their 101st game.

“I was able to throw strikes and keep the ball away,” Wooten said. “After I gave the two runs [in the third inning], I got into a rhythm and all of a sudden it was the eighth inning.”

With one out in the eighth, left-fielder Jason Cook, normally an infielder, threw out Giant leadoff man Tim Garland at home as he tagged and tried to score on Jon Sbrocco’s fly ball.

Then he got help from Dean, a struggling hitter who drove in two of the three runs.