{"id":6516,"date":"2026-05-02T20:24:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T20:24:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/briansumptersports.com\/?p=6516"},"modified":"2026-05-02T20:24:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T20:24:18","slug":"mustangs-lose-heartbreaker-to-saints","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/briansumptersports.com\/?p=6516","title":{"rendered":"Mustangs lose heartbreaker to Saints"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Knights keep slim title hopes alive with 9-3 win over Cloverdale<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lake County Sports on Facebook<\/p>\n\n\n\n

KELSEYVILLE >> Talk about your tough losses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Middletown Mustangs, tied 2-2 with North Central League I co-leader St. Helena, were on the verge of beating the Saints in the bottom of the seventh inning Friday afternoon at Wes Martin Field, only to end up 3-2 losers in eight innings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How painful was this one?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Middletown had runners at second and third with no outs and the heart of its batting order coming up only to leave the winning run stranded at third base. St. Helena (11-1 league, 16-6 overall) went on to score three times in the top of the eighth inning to win 5-2 and move into a first-place tie with Clear Lake (11-1) atop the league standings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wasted in the loss was a seven-inning effort by starting pitcher Jon Hawkins, who struck out 13, only to receive a no-decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe couldn\u2019t get it done,\u201d Middletown head coach Marc Humphrey said. \u201cOnly two, maybe three players on the team showed any desire to man up and beat a team that has now beat them 10 times in a row \u2026five years worth (of losses), but today could have changed that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Middletown scored single runs in the first and sixth innings against St. Helena starter Cole Joy. St. Helena scored runs in the third and fourth against Hawkins. Huck Anderson, working in relief of Joy, was the winning pitcher while Cody Perez, working in relief of Hawkins, took the loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Middletown 4-7 in league play with two games remaining against Lower Lake (at Lower Lake Wednesday, home against the Trojans Friday) and one against Cloverdale (May 11 in Middletown).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

St. Helena has a big two-game set next week against Kelseyville (9-3).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perez, Aiden Noonis, Fabian Becerril, John Finney and Hunter Karp had hits for Middletown, now 8-10 overall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other NCL I action Friday:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kelseyville 11, Cloverdale 1 (5 inn.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Kelseyville, Brayton Thomas pitched a four-hitter and Carson Stone went 3-for-4 with three RBIs as the Kelseyville Knights improved to 9-3 in league and 10-11 overall with a five-inning win over the Cloverdale Eagles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Knights face co-league leader St. Helena (11-1) twice next week, beginning with a Tuesday game in Kelseyville.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elijah Watkins joined Stone with three hits, going 3-for-3 with a double and two RBIs while Thomas helped his own cause by going 1-for-3 with two RBIs. JD Smart went 2-for-4 with a triple and RBI. Case Pivniska, who entered play with nine hits in his last nine official at-bats, went 0-for-0, walking three times and getting hit by a pitch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cloverdale fell to 0-9 in league play and 4-11 overall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kelseyville could earn a share of the league title, which would be its fourth straight, if its beats St. Helena twice next week and Fort Bragg beats Clear Lake (11-1) twice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Knights keep slim title hopes alive with 9-3 win over Cloverdale Lake County Sports on Facebook KELSEYVILLE >> Talk about your tough losses. The Middletown Mustangs, tied 2-2 with North Central League I co-leader St. Helena, were on the verge of beating the Saints in the bottom of the seventh inning Friday afternoon at Wes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85,20,84,17,19,59],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briansumptersports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6516"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briansumptersports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briansumptersports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briansumptersports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briansumptersports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6516"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/briansumptersports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6517,"href":"https:\/\/briansumptersports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6516\/revisions\/6517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briansumptersports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briansumptersports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briansumptersports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}