Davuluri hurls El Capitan back on top in the WAC

With the help of nine walks and two hit batters, setting the table wasn’t the problem for El Capitan High’s baseball team. What the Gauchos were looking for was one big hit to break the game open against Patterson.

Elijah Reid finally delivered it with a bases-loaded double to plate three runs in the fifth inning, and give starting pitcher Sai Davuluri some breathing room as the Gauchos bounced back from Wednesday’s loss to Patterson with a 7-1 win over the Tigers on Friday afternoon at El Capitan High.

The win moves El Capitan (12-6, 5-1 Western Athletic Conference) back atop the standings midway through the conference season.

“You think of everybody on top of the WAC and Los Banos is right there, Livingston is right there, Ceres is right there and us and Patterson,” El Capitan coach Aaron Ruz said. “This game was huge. It’s going to make a difference. It was big for us to bounce back after the loss. Patterson shut us out last game.”

The Gauchos sent their ace to the mound and Davuluri delivered big time with nine strikeouts as he limited the Tigers (13-4-1, 3-1) to one run on three hits.

Davuluri had a fastball, curveball and changeup working and he mixed in an occasional knuckleball that danced around as the Gauchos right-hander pitched against a strong wind.

“I live for these games,” Davuluri said. “I want to be the guy that leads my team and gives them confidence when I’m on the mound.”

Patterson started fast with two hits in the first inning, including an RBI double by pitcher Thomas Turner to score Santiago Cantu to give the Tigers a 1-0 lead.

The Gauchos answered with two runs in the bottom of the inning as Braiden Ward singled, stole second and advanced to third on a one-out single by Davuluri. Turner then walked Reid to load the bases and then hit Jacob Pilkington to tie the game at 1-1. Mark Sellers followed with a ground ball to second to score Davuluri to give the Gauchos a 2-1 lead.

Davuluri took over from there, holding the Tigers to just one hit the rest of the way.

“He’s the guy we lean on,” Ruiz said. “He’s a guy that’s going to be in the zone. He’s going to use all his pitches. We have 100 mph winds out here and it doesn’t matter with him. He just put his hat down and goes to work.”

The Gauchos added two more runs in the third inning as they took advantage of four consecutive walks. The last two came with the bases loaded to force in the runs to extend the lead to 4-1.

El Capitan loaded the bases again in the fifth inning for the third consecutive inning and this time Reid delivered the knockout blow as the blooped a double off of reliever Antonio Bustos that fell in front of the diving Turner in right field, allowing all three runs to score to extend the lead to 7-1.

“Before that inning we had talked about how we needed to give Sai some insurance,” Reid said. “With two outs, I didn’t want to come back to the dugout letting down my team.”

The Gauchos finished with seven hits as Ward finished with two hits, two stolen bases and two runs scored.

This story was originally published April 15, 2016 at 8:16 PM with the headline "Davuluri hurls El Capitan back on top in the WAC."