Rangers Take Their Lumps in Losses to Cheyenne

A pair of strong pitching performances by Cheyenne led the Sixers to a sweep of the Laramie Rangers at Cowboy Field on Saturday.

Laramie (27-22, 2-8) had their Senior Day spoiled with a pair of losses. Cheyenne took the opener, 13-2 in five innings, and won the nightcap, 7-0.

Those were the final two home games in the careers of Caleb Eaton, Tyler Oppie, and Calvin Webb. The three players were honor in between games on the doubleheader.

Rangers’ manager Aaron Lozano admitted after the games, his team came out flat.

“We talked about this in the pregame (on the radio), that Ryan’s (Chamberlain) going to throw strikes but Cheyenne’s going to put the ball in play, and Ryan did his job. We kind of didn’t play great defense in that first game. We come back the second game, and I think we were a little cleaner with our fielding, but some ill-advised throws (we had), can’t give Cheyenne extra bases (and we did). It is what it is. You do that against Cheyenne and these are the results you’re going to get. Even cleaning things up in game two, if you don’t have some offense, if you’re still going to make ill-advised throws, you’re still going to get beat.”

In the first game, Cheyenne jumped out to a 3-0 lead thanks to a pair of Laramie errors in the first inning. It was 4-0 Sixers when the Rangers cut the deficit in half. Tyler Oppie and Riley Hogsett had RBI-doubles in the fourth that trimmed it to 4-2. Cheyenne answered with nine runs in the fifth inning and won by the mercy rule, 13-2.

In the second game, the Sixers scored five in the second inning that set the stage for a 7-0 victory.

Lozano said, “The difference between us and Cheyenne right now is, I think we have the talent to compete with Cheyenne, but they have that killer instinct. They see that extra base take place and the guy at the plate starts salivating, oh, I’m getting two RBI’s here. I think we have the talent to put ourselves in those positions, but when you give a team that already has the killer instinct the opportunity to kill, they’re going to.”

Laramie had eight total hits in the twin bill, four in each game. They also had eight errors, five in the first and three in game two.

Hogsett had two hits, which included the RBI-double in the opener, while Jake Vigen led the Rangers with two hits in the nightcap. Chamberlain and Oppie took the losses on the mound.

Lozano tipped his cap to Cheyenne pitchers Trenton Rodriguez and Ty Lobmeyer but also felt his team wasn’t ready to go at the plate.

“I felt like in game one, we were guessing a lot, which is atypical of this team. They, typically, are going to go up confident at the plate and make things happen. I think in the second game, we pressed a little bit.”

He added that we know if we don’t string hits together or don’t get multiple hits in an inning, it’s hard to beat an opponent that’s not going to walk guys.

Lozano did praise the efforts of Hogsett and Vigen for their multi-hit games.

Next up for the Rangers is their regular-season finale at Gillette on Thursday, July 30. The twin bill is set for 3 and 5:30 p.m.