Stars take opener from West Tenn

By Conor Shreve

The Huntsville Stars baseball team continued their winning ways Monday night with a 9-2 pounding of the West Tennesee Diamond Jaxx. It’s the Stars seventh win this season and third in a row, four more remain at Pringles Park in Jackson, TN.

The Stars stellar center fielder Lorenzo Cain extended his prodigious hitting streak to 11 games in the third and took advantage of poor defensive play from West Tennessee to move in to scoring position before being singled in by Jonathan Lucroy. After reaching first, a wild pickoff attempt from Diamond Jaxx starting pitcher Dan Cortez followed by a wild pitch allowed Cain to move to third. Taylor Green doubled in Lucroy for his 11th RBI this season.

Sloppy play defined the night of the Diamond Jaxx. West Tennesse committed four errors Monday night, one day after picking up five in an 11-2 losing effort against Mississippi.

Huntsville ace Amaury Rivas battled rare control issues to put together his third straight solid performance in picking up his second win of 2010. Early in the game Rivas tossed six straight balls. An inning later he plunked back to back batters but relied on some defensive creativity to help get out of the third inning. Stars backstop Lucroy caught Alex Liddi straying too far off of first base after being hit by Rivas to lead off the inning. One pitch later, Rivas hit Kuo Hui Lo who made it to third before Rivas worked out of the inning. The Huntsville Hurler allowed one run in six innings, one more than in each of his previous two starts; Rivas walked three and struck out four.

Rivas’ counterpart Dan Cortez failed to get out of the fourth, giving up four runs on six hits in 3 1/3 innings of work. He struck out three and walked three in picking up his first decision of the season, a loss.

Game two between Huntsville and West Tennessee starts Tuesday night with first pitch scheduled for 7:05. The two squads will have to dig deep with a morning start on Wednesday at Pringles Park set for 11:05. Stars baseball can be heard locally on WTKI AM 1450/FM 92.9 and WEKI AM 1490. The Stars can be streamed on www.huntsvillestars.com