By John Alvarado

After two blowout loses in the past four days, the Millennium Tigers (10-14) traveled to Goodyear Ballpark Friday only to suffer another blowout, this time to the Apollo Hawks (27-6), 13-4.

On Saturday, another Millennium opponent, Mountain Ridge, didn’t let up in Mountain Ridge’s 16-7 road win. The schedule makers weren’t kind to Millennium this season, as the final six regular season opponents of Millennium are highly ranked.

The domination of the Tigers on Friday started when the Hawks put up four runs in the second inning with the help of RBI hits by Raffy Nieblas and Channy Ortiz and a Millennium wild pitch. But Millennium managed to score two runs and stayed in the game until the sixth inning, when the Hawks scored nine runs.

This was the third time that Millennium allowed five or more runs in the sixth inning, losing each game by double digits. Apollo head coach Jerod Aker said he was pleased with his lineup’s performance against Millennium’s starting pitcher, Michael Sears.

Aker acknowledged Sears’ performance in Millennium’s win over Centennial on April 15. Millennium coach Ryan Bethel said the errors, not starting pitcher Michael Sears’ performance, led to the bad result on Friday.

The winning pitcher for Apollo was Aker’s son, Jerod.   

John Alvarado is a sports journalism student at Arizona State.