Rangers Take Two From the Lobos in Wheatland

It was a successful 2020 debut for the Laramie Rangers on Monday, as they swept a doubleheader at the Wheatland Lobos.

Laramie won the opening game, 13-3, and took the nightcap, 8-3.

Rangers’ manager Aaron Lozano told his team after the first game, it’s time to look forward.

“It’s already a better start than last year, which means we can finally stop talking about last year. We can focus on this year’s team. This is who we are now, right? Now that that’s all in the past, two wins is a great way to start.”

In the first game, Laramie had 12 hits, including five doubles. Calvin Webb went 3-5 with two doubles and three RBI’s. Ryan Chamberlain and Tyler Oppie added a pair of hits apiece. Caleb Eaton, Darek Squires, and Brandon Chavez pitched for the Rangers. Eaton started and went three innings. He picked up the win.

Lozano was pleasantly surprised by their offensive output in the first game.

“I’ll tell you why. Not because these guys aren’t capable or because they don’t have the ability to hit the ball, but we had seen a little bit of live pitching on Sunday in practice and that was it. For these guys, this was essentially it. This was their first time out there. I challenged them to be aggressive, and they answered that challenge.”

Diego Medina tied the game, at 1-1, with an RBI-sacrifice fly in the second inning. Laramie took the lead with three runs in the third. An error led to one run, while Calvin Webb and Jake Vigen had RBI-doubles. The Rangers scored three more in the fourth on RBI-hits from Eaton, Chamberlain, and Webb. They added two runs in the fifth inning and capped it with four in the seventh.

Game two was more about the pitching of Oppie and Chamberlain. They combined for 14 strikeouts on the mound.

Lozano felt they kept Wheatland off balance.

“They really did. The thing that I liked to see out of Tyler and Ryan is they did get in a couple of tough spots, and they worked their way out of them. They kept their pitched counts low, and they rose up to those challenges.”

The Lobos had a 2-1 lead after the first inning. Eaton tied it with a solo home run to deep left-center in the second. A delayed steal of home by Webb plated the go-ahead run in the third. Laramie tacked on five in the fourth inning. The Rangers had RBI-hits from Webb, Billy Jenkin, and Hunter Lundahl.

Eaton led the offensive attack with three hits. Webb and Jenkin added two apiece.

Wheatland (0-4) was held to four hits in each game of the twin bill.

Lozano added, “(There’s) definitely a lot of things we can work on and build on in practice and put into action on Friday night.

Laramie heads to Douglas for their next games. The doubleheader at Nada Field in Douglas starts at 5 p.m. on Friday.