Baseball: Douglas splits openers

The Douglas High baseball team struggled through some season-opening miscues in a 5-2 loss to Reed Thursday afternoon but salvaged a split for the day with a 6-2 win over Santa Clara, Calif., in Sparks.

Sophomore Michael Whalin, making his varsity debut on the mound, pitched six innings of two-hit ball against Santa Clara, surrendering an unearned run while striking out one and walking none.

On the offensive side, Douglas chalked up a run in the bottom of the first as Tyler Hoelzen scored on a Jordan Hadlock single through the left side of the infield.

Hadlock finished 1-for-1 with two RBIs while Jeff Crozier knocked in three runs with a single in the third.

The Tigers broke the game open in the bottom of the third as Zack McFadden led off with a double. Hoelzen drew a walk and McFadden scored as Hadlock reached on an error.

Tim Rudnick bunted safely to load the bases and Crozier looped a single to shallow right with no outs to give the Tigers a 6-0 lead.

Santa Clara scored a run in the top of the sixth on an error and put the second run across in the seventh on an RBI double.

Douglas also got hits in the game from Rudnick and freshman third baseman Kameron VanWinkle. VanWinkle also had a pair of nice defensive plays early in the game, grabbing a sharp grounder with his backhand in the first inning before throwing the runner out at first and scooping a ball out of the dirt in the second before turning around to tag the runner headed to third.

Earlier in the day, the Tigers suffered some early bumps as Reed scored all five of its runs in the first two innings.

Wyatt Graham took the loss on the mound for the Tigers, but kept the Raider bats quiet over the third and fourth innings while Rudnick pitched two scoreless innings in relief.

Hadlock also hit a bomb of a home run to key the Tiger offense.

Douglas (1-1) takes on Damonte Ranch today at 3 p.m. at Damonte Ranch.