Garland’s Understudies Are Starting to Pitch In

Less than two weeks ago, Kennedy High baseball Coach Manny Alvarado was faced with the uncomfortable prospect of possibly playing nine tournament games in eight days with only one reliable pitcher.

After early losses to South Gate and Chaminade, Alvarado had difficulty trusting any Golden Cougar pitcher other than ace Jon Garland.

Now Alvarado may have too many choices.

The Golden Cougars used four innings of one-hit pitching by Garland and timely outs by reliever Jack Cassel to defeat Camarillo, 7-3, in a Birmingham tournament pool play game Saturday afternoon at Camarillo.

After a 1-2 start, Kennedy has won six consecutive games and, more importantly, received solid pitching from Wes Crown, Alex Lopez and Cassel in the past four days.

Crown held El Camino Real to four hits on Thursday, Lopez allowed one hit over the first six innings in a 7-2 victory over Nordhoff earlier Saturday and Cassel was in frequent trouble but always managed to escape.

“I still have choices to make, just now they’re good ones instead of bad,” Alvarado said.

Someone Alvarado doesn’t worry about is Garland (3-0), a senior right-hander who was in top form against the Scorpions.

With a half-dozen scouts monitoring every pitch, Garland allowed only a second-inning double to Joe Yingling, struck out seven and walked one.

Garland moved to first base in the fifth inning because he pitched six innings against El Camino Real on Tuesday and had reached the state-imposed 10-inning-per-week limit.

This against a team that scored 46 runs in its previous three games, including a 16-0 victory over Hollywood earlier Saturday.

Garland helped his own cause with a first-inning home run off Yingling (0-1). Yingling walked four batters in the first inning and Kennedy took a 3-0 lead.

A run-scoring single by Adrian Perez and a two-run single by Garland highlighted a four-run inning and forced the Scorpions to turn to Joe Borchard, who pitched five innings Wednesday.

Camarillo (7-2) threatened in the fifth, scoring a run and loading the bases against Cassel with two out and Borchard--the Scorpions’ best hitter--at the plate.

But Cassel retired Borchard on a grounder to second base.

Cassel escaped a bases-loaded jam in the sixth and gave up a two-run double to Jeff Bannon in the seventh before striking out Shane Miranda to end the game.