Baseball Game Preview: Ray Texans vs. King Mustangs

The Ray Texans are taking a road trip to square off against the King Mustangs at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday. The two teams are sauntering into the matchup backed by comfortable wins in their prior games.

Ray made up a huge gap compared to their last game against Gregory-Portland, but they still couldn't quite topple them. The Texans put the hurt on the Wildcats with a sharp 9-3 victory on Monday.

LUCAS TINAJERO and AIDAN ORTIZ did most of the damage at the plate: TINAJERO scored two runs and stole a base while going 2-for-4, while ORTIZ went 2-for-3 with four RBI. That's the most hits ORTIZ has posted since back in March. Another player making a difference was RAUL TREVINO, who scored two runs while going 2-for-3.

Ray always had someone on base and finished the game having posted an OBP of .583. They easily outclassed their opponents in that department as Gregory-Portland only posted an OBP of .231.

Meanwhile, winning is always nice, but doing so behind a season-high score is even better (just ask King). They never let Miller get on the board and left with an 18-0 win on Tuesday. The Mustangs haven't had any issues with the Buccaneers recently, as the game was their eighth consecutive victory against them.

Erick Valverde tossed a big game, keeping things locked down with no earned runs or hits while striking out 12 over five innings pitched.

On the hitting side, King got a massive performance out of Justin Lytle, who scored two runs while going 3-for-4. Lytle is becoming a predictor of the Mustangs' success: when he posts at least two runs the team is 3-1 (and 4-17-1 when he doesn't). Ezequiel De La Fuente also deserves some recognition as he brought in his first RBI of the season.

Ray is on a roll lately: they've won six of their last eight matchups. That's provided a nice bump to their 15-10 record this season. Those wins came thanks in part to their pitching effort, having only surrendered 3.1 runs on average over those games. As for King, their record now sits at 7-18-1.

Ray beat King 4-1 when the teams last played back in March. The rematch might be a little tougher for the Texans since the team won't have the home-field advantage this time around. We'll see if the change in venue makes a difference.