The Lower Columbia College baseball team took three of four games against Pierce to maintain a share of first place in the West Division.

Jared Akin came through with a sparkling complete game two-hitter to lead LCC to a 4-0 victory on Sunday April 29th at Mt. Tahoma High School. The Devils then held on for a 6-5 victory in the second game to cap off a successful weekend.

Saturday, the Devils split two games at Story Field to ramp up the pressure on Sunday.

Akin released some of that pressure with a clutch performance.  The sophomore right hander went nine innings and pitched to contact using his defense.  Akin threw just 84 pitches.  Three walks and a strikeout and no runs meant a huge start that rested the bullpen.

The Devils scored two runs in the first inning and then added single runs in the 4th and the 9th.

JT Strickler had two hits with a double and an RBI.  Sam Trend-Beacom had two RBI's without the benefit of a hit.

The second game started well as LCC put two runs on the board in the top of the first inning.  But Pierce came back with three runs in the bottom of the inning against starter Justin Solt.

Solt settled down after that and went 5 1/3 innings to get the win.  He gave up four runs and worked around seven hits, walking two and striking out four.

The big inning for LCC was the top of the second as they bounced right back and plated three runs.  That allowed Solt and reliever Ryan Kaser to settle in.  Kaser got the save with 1 2/3 innings of relief.  Kaser got a big double play ball in the bottom of the final inning (7th) and that turned out huge.  Rylan Cratsenberg took him deep to get the Raiders within one but Kaser settled down after a walk to get the final out.

Noah Andrews had a solid game for the Devils going 2 for 4 with three RBI's.

Strickler had a double and two RBI's.  Kyle Sandstrom went 2 for 4 with two runs scored.

The Devils are now 14-3 in the division and share first with Tacoma, although LCC does own the tie-breaker between the two.  Lower Columbia goes to 23-7 overall.

The Diablos Rojos will have a Cinco De Mayo home double header with Green River on Saturday May 5th at Story Field. Start time is 1 pm.  The two teams will then play two at Heritage Park in Puyallup Sunday May 6th.