Baseball Recap: Hayden Mariani and Xander Harms Secure Win for Healdsburg

Healdsburg lost a heartbreaker the last time they played Cloverdale, but it's fair to say they got their revenge given the result of Tuesday's contest. The Healdsburg Greyhounds' pitchers stepped up to hand the Cloverdale Eagles an 11-0 shutout on Tuesday. With that victory, the Greyhounds brought their scoring average up to 6.5 runs per game.

Henry Smith made a splash while hitting and pitching. He tossed one inning while giving up no earned runs or hits. Smith was even better at the plate, scoring a run and stealing Two bases. while going 4-for-4. Smith is crushing it when it comes to stolen bases: he's snagged at least one every time he's taken the field this season.

Eric Nielsen

Batters Struck Out (Career)

03/11/25 vs Cloverdale	11
02/28/25 vs Middletown	9
03/16/24 @ Point Arena	8
04/25/24 @ Sonoma Academy	6
05/03/24 vs Piner	2

In other pitching news, Eric Nielsen tossed a big game, not allowing a single earned run and allowed only one hit while striking out 11 over 4.1 innings pitched. The dominant performance gave him a new career-high in strikeouts.

Back at the plate, Xander Harms and Hayden Mariani did most of the damage at the plate: Harms scored two runs while going 2-for-4, while Mariani scored three runs while getting on base in four of his five plate appearances. The dominant performance also gave Harms a new career-high in RBI (three). Nova Perrill also deserves some recognition as he brought in his first RBI of the season.

Healdsburg was getting hits left and right and finished the game having posted a batting average of .419. The team's really been improving in that area: they've now improved their batting average total in three consecutive games.

Healdsburg's record now sits at 3-1. As for Cloverdale, their loss was their fifth straight on the road dating back to last season, which dropped their record down to 2-2.

Looking ahead, Healdsburg will look to defend their home field on Friday against Montgomery at 6:00 p.m. Healdsburg will aim to continue their three-game streak of scoring more runs each match than the last. As for Cloverdale, they will head out on the road to challenge Willits at 4:00 p.m. on Thursday. Willits has struggled to contain batters this season (they've allowed 10.6 runs per game on average), something Cloverdale will no doubt try to take advantage of.