The Philomath High School baseball team won its 12th straight game with a 5-1 victory Wednesday at Cascade.
The Warriors will go for their third straight series sweep in the Oregon West Conference Thursday afternoon. The first pitch is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. at Terry Stephenson Field.
Warriors senior Mason Stearns picked up where he left off in the first game of the series — on the mound. Stearns pitched the seventh inning to earn a save in a 4-1 win over the Cougars on Monday and in this latest effort, tossed a complete game to earn the victory. Stearns allowed three hits, one run and two walks while striking out seven over the full seven-inning contest.
At the plate, Stearns helped his own cause by driving in three runs — one on a sacrifice fly in the second inning and two more when he reached on an error in the sixth.
Philomath actually had only four hits in the game against Cascade starter Slade Hudson. Freshman AJ Altishin went 1 for 2 with a double. Junior Kayson Olsen, sophomore Caleb Babcock and sophomore Rocco De La Rosa had singles. Cascade committed four errors.
Philomath took an early lead with two runs in the first. Olsen hit a one-run single, advanced quickly around the bases and scored on an error.
The Warriors added a run in the second on the Stearns sac fly, a ball hit to right field to bring in junior Logan Matthews, who had reached earlier on a walk.
The game remained 3-1 until the sixth inning when Philomath added a couple of insurance runs when two runners came in on the ball put into play by Stearns.
Hudson’s four-hitter included only one earned run and eight strikeouts with five walks for the Cougars (2-14, 1-7).
