Kan Carries Pines Charter Past Hollywood Hills

One of the things that makes baseball such a great sport is the different ways coaches approach similar situations.

In Wednesday night’s non-district tilt between Hollywood Hills and Pembroke Pines Charter, that fact was on display as two veteran coaches took two very different views toward their starting pitchers.

The Jaguars ended up winning the error-filled contest 3-2, with Alejandro Kan pitching a complete game for the victory. Kan also pitched five solid innings earlier this year in the district win over the Spartans.

So, was Manager Jose Iglesias thinking about the fact that these teams have a chance to meet in the 6A-15 semifinals and whether having Hollywood Hills possibly see Kan again would be a bad thing?

“We take things one game at a time,” Iglesias said. “We don’t look ahead. We worry about the game we’re playing. From day one, the coaches have told the players ‘don’t look ahead.’ Let’s take care of the next pitch.”

Kan took care of his pitches all night, striking out eight and allowing just one earned run on six hits.

“Alejandro knows how to pitch and get us out of jams,” Iglesias said. “We have tremendous confidence in him when he’s on the mound.”

Meanwhile, Hills starter Jordan Hill was pulled after only three innings, despite not allowing a hit.

“We gotta rely on Jordan, as he usually gives us our best shot to win, because we have our best defense behind him,” Spartans manager Charlie Cardinale said. “If he’s on, he can be enough of a problem for people. I was going to throw him two, we let him go a third. He did what he had to do, and we got him out of there.”

Although we’ll have to see if that was the right call in the long run for Cardinale and his team, the Jaguars (7-7-1, 1-0) made it look like the wrong call short-term when, in the fourth inning, Pines Charter scored the three runs it needed off reliever Tommy Grant.

Down 2-0, Derick Garcia led off with a single, and Jake Jacobs and Eduardo Espinosa followed suit to load the bases. A wild pitch from Grant scored the opening Jaguars run, and then a costly throwing error in the infield led to the second and third runs coming across.

Grant got out of the inning without any further scoring and struck out three batters in his two innings of work, but the damage was done.

The Spartans (8-9, 2-2), meanwhile, were getting runners on base all evening but just couldn’t get them across. They stranded 10 total, including four at third base, and had a big chance to put up some runs in the second inning with the bases loaded and no outs but only put one run across.

“That second inning. It’s always a bad message when you have bases loaded and no outs and you only get one run. If you leave them out there like that…,” Cardinale said. “We had some things going right tonight and just didn’t capitalize. We let one get away, but I have a feeling we’re going to see them in the playoffs.”

Although Hills are done with district play, Pines Charter still has to play Fort Lauderdale on Friday and Stranahan next week, as well as finish off its 7-7 tie with Archbishop McCarthy. The Jaguars could finish anywhere from first to fifth, depending on how their results go.

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