If his team was going to be tested, Manitou Springs baseball coach Brandon DeMatto preferred it be tested early in the year.
That’s what happened the Mustangs hosted The Classical Academy on April 7 and suffered a 10-0 loss, their first loss to a Colorado team this season. Perhaps the key to the game was the Titans sending out left-handed pitcher Vinny Miller, who held the Mustangs (6-2-1 overall) to a .125 batting average.
It was a good reminder for the Mustangs that, although they are a very talented group of players, they still need to do a ton of work to see the success they’re hoping for this season.
“That’s definitely one of the multiple messages we had,” DeMatto said. “We have to continue to work hard because there are teams out there that have more experience and have played at a higher level than we have.”
The Mustangs were limited to two hits, which came from Raymond McCaskey and Canon Feist.
The Mustangs also struck out 11 times, which helped impart a little perspective to a team that had scored a combined 43 runs in its past three games.
“After (losing) that Woodland Park game and going on a six-game winning streak, that kind of humbled us,” freshman Hayden Martinez said. “It’ll get us back on track and help us regain our focus.”
Martinez has been an instant contributor for the Mustangs in his first year of high school and has seen what the team is capable of at its best and when things aren’t necessarily going well.
The poor play against TCA has a silver lining, however. The Mustangs have plenty of time to work on the flaws they discovered for themselves, which gives them a great shot at making improvements through the course of the regular season.
“We’re happy this game came early,” DeMatto said. “We’re happy we saw the arm we saw because now it shows us what we have to do from a practice perspective to be ready for those kinds of arms. That’s what we’re working on now.”
Manitou heads to Jefferson Academy on Thursday, April 14, then heads to Salida for a Tri-Peaks double-header on Saturday. It will be the league opener for the Mustangs; last week’s double-header against Buena Vista was rescheduled for May 7.