Baseball Game Preview: Crean Lutheran Saints vs. Canyon Comanches

For the second straight game, Crean Lutheran will face off against Canyon. The Saints will look to defend their home field on Thursday against the Comanches at 3:15 p.m. The two teams have allowed few runs on average (Crean Lutheran 3.7, Canyon 3.7) so any runs scored will be well earned.

Crean Lutheran's usually-dominant pitching crew will be looking to make up for Tuesday's struggle, when Canyon hitters got past them. The Saints fell just short of the Comanches by a score of 11-9 on Tuesday. The loss continues a trend for the Saints in their meetings with the Comanches: they've now lost six in a row.

For Canyon's part, they got a great performance from Kemuel Zhang as he didn't allow a single earned run while striking out eight over five innings pitched. That's the most strikeouts Zhang has posted since back in March.

At the plate, Cooper Stevenson was a standout: he went a perfect 2-for-2 with four RBI, one triple, and one run. Those four RBI gave him a new career-high. The team also got some help courtesy of Chip Mertz, who got on base in four of his five plate appearances with two runs, two doubles, and one RBI.

Canyon always had someone on base and finished the game having posted an OBP of .579. That's the best OBP they've posted all season.

Canyon pushed their record up to 17-6 with the win, which was their seventh straight at home. Those home victories came thanks in part to their pitching effort, having only surrendered 3.1 runs on average over those games. As for Crean Lutheran, their defeat dropped their record down to 15-8.