The Rams will regroup before district play

It wasn’t just a 12-2 beating they took at the hands of Sandia. That was, in and of itself, bad enough. The Matadors made very quick and very public work of the messy and listless Rams, finishing up in less than 90 minutes.

Rio Rancho’s pitchers probably had their toughest day of the year. The defense was surprisingly loose, with four errors. The offense was stagnant.

The energy that usually defines the Rams was visibly absent.

“We didn’t come out and play our best baseball,” Rams coach Ron Murphy said. “We were flat, and our intensity wasn’t there.”

Rio Rancho’s Wyatt Kelley pitches against the Matadors during their game Friday at Sandia. Kelley is a newcomer to the Rams team, which lost the game 12-2. (GREG SORBER/JOURNAL)

Maybe, he said, Rio Rancho’s 5-4 loss to Carlsbad last Saturday was still lingering, psychologically. The Rams have been bouncing from one big game to another throughout the month of March, and perhaps Friday’s loss to the 12-1 Matadors — a team Rio Rancho beat 7-4 two weeks earlier — was a delayed hangover.

And yes, those things happen in baseball. At this level, it is difficult to get through an entire schedule without having a day or two like this when everything comes off the rails.

Heck, even Rio Rancho’s transportation arrangements were askew Friday.

And that was the first inkling that this day was not going to end well.

While the Rams’ C-team baseball squad had a bus of their own to travel to La Cueva, Murphy said incredulously, Rio Rancho’s varsity baseball team shared a bus ride into Albuquerque with — get this — Cleveland’s JV softball team, who were being taken to Manzano.

“I knew we were in trouble the minute we got on the bus,” Murphy said.

He didn’t blame this for the Rams’ on-field difficulties, but he’s smart enough to know that it didn’t help, either, mixing genders and schools like that.

What’s worse is that Rio Rancho had to wait for a good 30 minutes after the game at Sandia for a ride back. The Rams were forced to uncomfortably pass the time, and Murphy was plenty steamed by the time bus finally did show up. It was a Murphy’s Law kind of afternoon.

In the big picture, Friday’s events will fade away. The Rams have one final nondistrict test next week against Manzano, then begin District 1-5A play the next week.

And to be honest, most everything Murphy has touched has turned to gold this season.

Neither of the Rams’ projected top two starting pitchers, Easton Bruere and Brandon Garcia, have thrown a single pitch between them this season.

Others have picked up the cause, players such as Evan Offutt, Eli Cappello, newcomer Wyatt Kelley and Brendan Wanchek. The staff’s ERA was about 3.20 coming into Friday, which is more than respectable given Rio Rancho’s tough schedule and the lack of big-game experience the Rams have on the bump.

(As an aside, it appears increasingly unlikely that sophomore Bruere will get to see any action this season, although he does have a doctor’s appointment for a checkup on his bum right arm.)

What’s more, other position-player newcomers, such as second baseman Eddie Vasquez and center fielder Angelo Lujan, have been wonderful surprises at the varsity level, supplementing what is mostly a veteran club.

A two-game losing streak isn’t likely to linger long with the Rams. The Sandia loss will sober the Rams up a bit, and it’s good they have a few days before playing Manzano. They can catch their breath and regroup.

Despite Friday, they remain one of 5A’s most well-rounded and interesting teams. This is a team that could very easily be playing on the final day of the season.
— This article appeared on page 06 of the Albuquerque Journal