Bats alive and well: Broncbusters power past Otero

By Mike Pilosof

Garden City, KS-There is one incontrovertible fact about the 2018 Broncbusters: Corbin Truslow is pretty good.

On Tuesday, the freshman power hitter continued his torrid start, mashing his sixth homer of the season, ReJean Bourget tattooed his first, and Garden City topped Otero 13-4 in their final non-conference game at Williams Stadium.

"I thought we pitched it really well," Head Coach Chris Finnegan said. "We were able to throw everyone we needed to."

Garden City (12-6) wasted no time getting on the board when Chris Lara singled home Clint Allen to give the Broncbusters a 1-0 lead in the firset. After Otero (4-9) tied the game in the top of the second when Devin Mayfield took Brandt Sobczak deep, Garden City pounced on the Rattlers in the third.

Allen led off the frame with a triple before scoring on an error on third basemen Issac Standridge. A couple of batters later, Truslow hit a two-run, moon ball to center field that pushed the lead to 4-1. Lara followed with a double; stole third and then came home on an errant throw by catcher Xavier Posada. Bourget's RBI groundout capped off a five-run inning that put Garden City in front 6-1.

Lara added a two-run single in the fourth, Bourget scored on a wild pitch in the fifth coupled with Allen's RBI single and Robbie Young's run-scoring base hit to stretched the lead to 11-1.

The Rattlers got a run back in the top of the sixth before Garden City tallied three more in the bottom half, powered by Bourget's first long ball of the season that made it 13-2.

Otero scored twice in the seventh on Jacob Cordova's two-out, two-run single, but the Broncbusters slammed the door shot from there. Eric Heiman worked a perfect 8^th, and Nick Iossi worked around a leadoff single to strike out Carter Mossey and Gerard Mendez in the ninth to end the game.

Aaron Peach picked up first win of the season in relief, fanning two in a scoreless fourth. Sobczak started the game and allowed just one run on four hits and struck out one. AJ Stephens toss an inning of scoreless relief as did Gino Bourget.

Ty Jordan lost his first game of the season for Otero, yielding six runs on five hits. He walked three and struck out one.

Next up: Garden City vs. Cloud County-Thursday, March 1-12:45 p.m. pregame; 1 p.m. first pitch on 99.9 FM; westernkansasnews.com/kwkr and KWKR mobile app