The Ventura baseball team found runs hard to come by on Thursday afternoon, falling at Oxnard College 4-1 in Western State Conference North Division action. AJ Medrano was 3-4 on the day at the plate while Dayton Provost and JT Heade both slapped out two hits in the game. Blake Campbell allowed one run over 6.2 innings of work on the mound in relief for the Pirates (15-15, 5-5).
The Pirates fell into a hole early, allowing two runs to the Condors in the first inning on one hit, two walks and an error. Then VC gave up another score in the second on two hit batsmen, a passed ball, a walk and one hit.
VC got things turned around with a run in the top of the third inning. Steele Ledford and Provost walked to lead off the inning, the Ledford advanced to third on a tag-up on a foul out. Fabian De La Barcena followed with a sacrifice fly to left field to score Provost., cutting the deficit to 3-1.
The Pirates managed to have base runners in each of the next five innings, but could not plate another run. They gave up another score in the bottom of the fifth for the final 4-1 margin.
Ventura returns to action on Saturday April 7. They will wrap up the season series with Oxnard at 1:00 pm at Pirate Park.