Burbank Baseball Beats Glendale 16-11 in Pacific League Slugfest

Burbank High’s baseball team beat Glendale 16-11 on the road Tuesday, snapping a five-game losing streak with a Pacific League win that looked more like a football score by the fifth inning.

Twenty-seven combined runs. Twenty-three hits. Fourteen walks. If you don’t like offense, Tuesday wasn’t your game.

Head coach Bob Hart didn’t try to sugarcoat the pitching side of things. “I thought we played well early and then let up,” Hart said. “We struggled on the hill, but we played pretty good defense.” That’s about right. The Bulldogs gave up 11, but they scored 16, and in this league, that math works.

Burbank came out swinging from the first pitch. Seven batters came to the plate in the opening inning. Senior Ryland Le Clair put the first two runs on the board with a single to right, and then sophomore Mason Schwartz pushed it to 3-0 with an RBI single up the middle. Glendale’s Hunter Knowles cut it to 3-1 on a sacrifice fly, but The Nitros never really threatened to take the lead.

The third inning finished it.

Six Burbank runs scored in that frame, on five hits, and the biggest swing belonged to senior Julian Recinos, who lined a three-run triple to right center. Sophomore Luka Kuiper followed with an RBI single to center. Senior Tomas Angel drove in another run with a single to right. Junior Ezekiel Canto contributed an RBI infield hit. And senior Andru Machado, who led off the inning with a single to center, came all the way around to score. Hart wasn’t going to leave the postgame without mentioning Recinos by name. “Julian Recinos had two triples and those stood out to me,” he said.

Recinos finished with two triples and three RBIs. Angel matched him, going 3-for-4 with a triple and three runs batted in. Schwartz went 3-for-3 on the afternoon. That’s the kind of production the Bulldogs need if they’re going to climb out of a 2-9-1 overall record and a 2-4-1 mark in Pacific League play.

Burbank pushed it to 10-4 in the fourth when Kuiper singled up the middle and eventually scored on a wild pitch. Recinos came up again in the fifth, pulled another triple to right, and crossed home on yet another wild pitch. The Bulldogs then sent 10 batters to the plate in the sixth and scored five more, with Angel delivering a two-run triple and a run-scoring grounder from sophomore Kris Haddad adding to the pile. Sophomore Geo Grair singled in the seventh and scored to close Burbank’s offensive account at 16.

Glendale head coach John Botelho didn’t make excuses. “Burbank came to swing the bat today,” Botelho said. “We struggled on the hill, but we played pretty good defense.” He wasn’t wrong about the Bulldogs’ approach. “Coach Hart always has his kids ready to go but they had the right approach at the plate today. They hit the ball hard and good things happened for them.”

That’s a generous read, but it’s also accurate. The Nitros weren’t lifeless. Glendale’s Maniel Manuelian went a single and a double with four RBIs, and Allen Corwin added a two-run single. It’s just that Glendale, now 2-14 overall and 0-7 in Pacific League play, couldn’t keep pace once Burbank’s lineup found a rhythm in the third.

It’s been a tough spring for both programs, honestly. But Friday could mean something different for the Bulldogs if they can get consistent pitching behind what’s clearly a capable lineup. The Southern Section of the California Interscholastic Federation standings won’t move much on one win, but momentum is real, and Burbank showed Tuesday it can generate runs in bunches.

More from this game at MyBurbank.