Cypress’ Palazzolo Earns Victory in Relief

Tony Palazzolo gave up one hit in 4 2/3 innings of relief and got the victory as Cypress beat visiting Golden West, 6-3, in an Orange Empire Conference baseball game Thursday.

Palazzolo (2-1) entered with two on and one out in the fifth and walked the first batter and gave up a sacrifice fly to Casey Flanagan to cut the lead to 5-3, then got a groundout to end the threat.

Palazzolo, a sophomore left-hander, then gave up only a seventh-inning walk and a ninth-inning single the rest of the way. He had seven strikeouts, including all three outs in the ninth.

Cypress (15-3, 1-1) scored five times in the second.

The rally started when Brian Flanagan hit a home run that just cleared the left-center field fence. It was his third of the season.

Matt Roman later had a sacrifice fly and Greg Jacobs capped the inning with a three-run home run. It was his fourth. Jacobs also had two singles.

Craig Kuzmic added a run-scoring double in the fifth for Cypress, the defending conference champion.

“I felt like we got five early then shut it down,” said Cypress Coach Scott Pickler, who wasn’t happy with his team’s effort and made his players run sprints after the game.

Ken Sundstrom and Chris Carey had two hits each for Golden West (8-8, 0-3), which had two chances early for big innings.

The Rustlers had first and third and one out in the first and the bases loaded and two outs in the third but didn’t score either time.