The Arroyo Seco Saints (4-5) made an excellent outing against the South Bay Sliders Saturday evening in a victory of 3-1.

The winning pitcher was James Giambolvo who gave the Saints six strong innings allowing only one hit and four strikeouts. The losing pitcher was Walker Marks.

Manager Togeas was satisfied with his team’s pitching. “James came out and set the tone real well and he got the defense behind him,” said Togeas.

The Saints began the game with an offensive push made possible by good clean-up hitting. Conant singled with Posivak on second base followed by a run batted in by Rosales on a softly hit line drive to left field. 

The story happening on the other side of the world was good starting pitching. Giambolvo threw no more than nine pitches and retired three batters in the first inning. Giambolvo would later retire the next three batters in the second inning.

The Saints showed life in the bottom of the second inning with base runners on the corners and no outs. Netz sent a deep fly ball to left field allowing Warren to score, giving the Saints a 3-0 lead.

“Netz showed off great situational hitting. He avoided the double play and got the ball in the air,” Togeas said.

Giambolvo was manna from heaven in the top of the third inning, striking out two batters faced and making the third out with a weak pop-up to Rouse. 

A bizarre inning followed. Posivak reached on a bases on ball, who reached second on a single by Rouse. On a bloop hit that landed in the gap in shallow left-center field, Pasillas recovered the ball and completed the force play at third base. Later with the bases loaded, Warren left three runners stranded, keeping the score 3-0 Saints.

Giambolvo’s fourth inning performance was nearly sublime seemingly made possible with some sort of divine intervention, filling the scoreboard with capital ‘ks’ facing in the rightward direction. Giambolvo’s masterpiece was undermined by Barba’s ground ball that went up the middle of the infield. 

In the fourth inning Fuller, who had singled earlier in the game, walked but in a rare baserunning blunder, he was doubled up at first on a fly ball by Netz to shallow left field. 

With a three run lead heading into the seventh inning, the Saints relieved Giambolvo with Gilbert Hernandez who did the job of preserving the Saints marginal lead. Saints fans could start to experience worry with the tying run at first, who was Sahagian who had hit a bloop RBI single to centerfield, narrowing the Saints lead to two runs. As fate would have it, Hernandez then had Pasillas ground out for a force play at second base.

In the eighth inning with the tying run at the plate, there was worry in the air that the game would be tied. Olmeda singled and reached second base due to a balk caused by Hernandez simply having the ball fall out of his glove and hit the rubber of the mound. Hernandez would have his revenge as he threw out Olmeda trying to steal third base. O’Reilly then struck out to end the inning, keeping the game at 3-1.

Fernandez prevented further scoring that would make a comeback out of reach by retiring the side in order. 

Lowell Schipper came to relieve Hernandez, close the game and seal the fate of the game in the Saints favor.