If most of the crowd at Friday afternoon's season opener had left the game early, Santa Fe Community College baseball coach Johnny Wiggs wouldn't have blamed them.
After all, the air was chilly and the game had been sloppy and filled with errors, lots of walks and even more runners left on base.
But anyone who left would have missed the eighth-inning offensive explosion that surely warmed up the shivering crowd, as the Saints (1-1) went on to defeat Lake Sumter Community College 12-2.
"It's a good start," Wiggs said. "Any time you win a game 12-2, it's always nice. I'm a former pitcher, so it kills me in certain aspects that their team's walking a lot of guys. But then, coaching the team that's scoring a lot of runs is pretty fun."
The Saints pounded out 13 hits to go along with 10 walks. They took a quick 3-0 lead in the first inning and never looked back, erupting for six runs in the eighth inning.
Most of the production came from the bottom half of the batting order. Designated hitter Mike Miranda led the way, going 3 for 5 with two RBI and two ringing doubles to the left-field wall - the only extra-base hits of the game. Third baseman Trace Venegas went 2 for 5 with two RBI, and right fielder Andy Mee was 2 for 2 with three walks.
"We've got a pretty solid lineup," Wiggs said. "We've got guys batting six, seven and eight (Venegas, Miranda and Mee) who a lot of times could be batting three, four, and five, so it can be a dangerous lineup. The wind was blowing hard, it was a cool day and we didn't swing it like we're capable of, but we're optimistic about the offense."
But the real strength of this Saints team is its pitching depth, Wiggs said, and it showed on Friday. The pitching staff gave up only two unearned runs and scattered 10 hits while walking four.
Sophomore lefty John Lambert started for SFCC and pitched three innings to earn the win, giving up one unearned run on five hits. SFCC used three more pitchers in the game, none pitching more than three innings.
"This is a marathon, not a sprint," Wiggs said. "We tried to split up the game today with our pitchers. One, this is the earliest we've ever started. We've only been practicing for 15 days, so three innings is plenty, especially in this cool weather. We just want to get everybody's feet wet."
The Saints stole seven bases in the game, four coming in the first three innings.
"We felt like we could run on their starter," Wiggs said. "It was nice for us to be able to be aggressive. Hopefully we're going to be a really aggressive team that can hit and run - we don't have a ton of team speed, but when we find guys we can steal off of, we're going to take advantage."
The Saints traveled to Winter Haven on Saturday to take on Polk Community College. SFCC held a 4-0 lead late into the game but ended up falling to Polk 5-4.
