Baseball: Roadrunners win third straight, go for VVC sweep on Saturday

Rio Hondo College erupted for five runs in the seventh inning to rally for a 6-1 Foothill Conference win over visiting Victor Valley College on Thursday. The Roadrunners have taken the first two games of the three-game FC series and look for the sweep on Saturday (Mar. 26) at VVC. Rio Hondo's third straight win improved its record to 10-10 overall and 5-3 in conference play.

After five scoreless innings, Victor Valley (1-21, 0-11 FC) took advantage of a pair of Rio Hondo errors to score an unearned run off Roadrunner starting pitcher Brady Carlson.

But Rio Hondo's bats finally came alive in the seventh. Randy Buenrostro got the rally started with a lead-off home run to tie up the game. From that point, Victor Valley starting pitcher Anthony Beasley lost control as he hit three of the final four batters he faced to force in the go-ahead run. R.J. Romo hit a sacrifice fly to score Ruben Rios while a VVC error and wild pitch allowed two more runs to come in.

Matt Munoz' RBI ground out allowed Mike Hernandez to score in the eighth for the Roadrunners' final run.

Carlson pitched well to earn the win and improve to 2-3 overall. He lowered his earned run average to 1.79 on the season by allowing no earned runs and just two hits over seven innings. Carlson struck out six and walked three.

Buenrostro went 2 for 3 to lead Rio Hondo at the plate.