HARLINGEN — The San Benito Greyhounds and Harlingen Cardinals battled through five extra innings Thursday after-noon and, in the end, a mistake turned out to be the difference.
After Harlingen first baseman Jaedon Wynn couldn’t control a rushed throw from shortstop Hayes Duffy in the top of the 12th inning, San Benito’s Jerry Delgado scored the deciding run, lifting the ‘Hounds (1-2 in District 32-6A) to a 7-6 extra-inning win Thursday afternoon at Harlingen Field.
San Benito closer JR Gaitan, who pitched six innings in relief, and the rest of the San Benito defense held Harlingen’s offense in check when it counted most to secure the victory.
“I love my kids, I really do,” said San Benito head coach Ram Partida. “They had their struggles in the last couple of games but today, they fought. They fought and fought and fought and at the end of the day, I just love these kids. Give all the credit to Harlingen also; that’s a great ballclub.”
In the 12 innings, Harlingen’s errant throw was the fourth of the day, but it was the only one that allowed a run to score.
After a long day, Harlingen (2-1 in district play) head coach Bryan Aughney expected some errors, but saw Gaitan’s six-inning, eight-strikeout performance as the difference.
“It’s 12 innings and you expect to have some er-rors here and there,” Aughney said. “Once we tied it up, San Benito brought in Gaitan and he did a good job pounding the fastball. The balls we hit, we hit hard but we had too many guys watching strikes go right by.”
San Benito fell behind 5-2 after the Red Birds put up a pair of runs in the bottom of the fifth.
In the top of the sixth, however, the Greyhounds answered with a four-run inning, highlighted by 2 RBI single by Gaitan to tie the game at 5.
San Benito pulled ahead 6-5 later in the inning on a sac fly by Alvaro Vargas which brought in Orly Eguia.
After Harlingen tied the game at 6-6 on an RBI single from Nick Garcia, the ‘Hounds pulled start-ing pitcher Mando Medrano after allowing 12 hits and six runs and sent in their closer Gaitan.
From that point, Gaitan forced extras and struck out eight batters, allowing just one hit in six scoreless innings to pick up the win.
“Our goal with (Gaitan) is to close games and he threw over his limit today, but he kept fighting,” Partida said. “I told him he was done, but he said ‘No, sir, I’m not done. I’m done when it’s over.’ I give him a lot of credit.”
Harlingen’s Michael Noyola took the loss de-spite a strong relief effort in which he pitched 5.2 innings and recorded four strikeouts, gave up just one hit and no earned runs.
At the plate, Gaitan was 2 of 6, with two RBIs, while teammate David Vargas was 2 of 3 and also re-corded two RBIs.
For Harlingen, leadoff man Kenny Reininger went 3 of 4 and starting pitcher Justin Reta re-corded a hit with 2 RBIs.