Chargers Deliver Dazzling Display Despite Dropping Game 1 to Los Gatos

The Wilcox Chargers baseball team lost to Los Gatos 7-5 in game one, but used the momentum to beat the Wildcats 4-3 in game two.

It’s quite rare for a sports team to lose a game and yet still claim to have the momentum heading into a second-straight game against the same team.

The Wilcox Chargers arguably found themselves in such a scenario on Wednesday, May 14. Wilcox fell to its then undefeated league rival, the Los Gatos Wildcats, by a final of 7-5. Wilcox, however, was objectively the better team over the vast majority of the time spent on the field. After a disastrous first inning saw the Wildcats score all seven of their runs, the Chargers were by far the more impressive team the rest of the way.

Wilcox junior Gabriel Razon Barragan took over on the mound with two on and two out in the second inning, already the Chargers’ third pitcher of the game. All the right-handed pitcher did was shutout the undefeated Wildcats over four-and-one-third innings without allowing a hit.

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It was a remarkable performance considering Barragan’s fastball velocity is far from overpowering opposing hitters. Barragan attacked the strike zone and used elite location and a mixture of pitches to keep the Wildcats off balance for the majority of the afternoon.

“My mindset was I can do this; I believe in myself that I can get out of this situation,” remarked Barragan on getting out of the second-inning jam, facing his first hitter with two runners already on base. “Just trust my teammates to make plays behind me.”

“That just shows his ability to grind, the effort he puts in; he’s really tenacious when he’s out there,” chimed Wilcox center fielder Matty Tiendas on Barragan’s performance. “He was great today.”

“His nickname is ‘Big Heavy’ because he throws a heavy ball,” beamed Wilcox Manager Matt Huth with a big smile. “Every single time we bring him in, he’s our stop-gap guy. When we get in trouble, he comes in and shuts that inning down. His job is to come in and throw strikes and that’s what he does every time.

The strike throwing allowed Barragan to put up zero after zero and gave the Chargers’ offense the time to chip away.

Wilcox received strong performances at the plate from Gilbert Padilla, Justin Forster and Samuel Martinez. Padilla and Martinez drove in RBI singles, while Forster was on base throughout the game, stealing multiple bases and scoring multiple runs.

Isaiah Mata also chipped in with a sacrifice fly to make the game 7-3 in the fifth. The biggest blast came in the sixth inning when Tiendas launched a towering, two-run homer far over the right-center-field fence, cutting the Wildcats’ lead in half.

While the final score goes into the record books as a loss for the Chargers, for 5.5 out 6.5 innings played on Wednesday, Wilcox was the superior club.

“Yeah, we can take momentum out of that game, 100 percent,” responded Huth when asked if his team can carry momentum into the rematch with the Wildcats. “They didn’t have a hit after the first inning.”

Two days later, the Chargers did indeed carry the momentum into the next game, as Wilcox defeated the Wildcats 4-3, giving Los Gatos its first and only league loss of the season. Both teams are now preparing for the CCS playoffs.