Baseball: Cody Thompson comes through for Alemany

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

A crowd of close to 400 and lots of professional scouts came out for Tuesday’s Mission League opener between No. 4-ranked Alemany and No. 2 Harvard-Westlake. On the mound was top pro prospect Lucas Giolito. But Alemany had its own ace in senior Cody Thompson, who has been pitching in pressure games since he was a freshman.

And Thompson outpitched Giolito in a 2-1 Alemany victory. Thompson struck out seven, walked four and allowed three hits. He struck out Max Fried to end the game.

Giolito went 6 1/3 innings, allowing five hits while striking out four and walking three. He also hit three batters. He left after tweaking his groin. Alemany scored two runs in the third on singles by Pete Van Gansen and Ryan Paramo, along with two hit batters and a walk.

Harvard-Westlake got a run in the bottom of the sixth on an RBI single from Ryan Vanderschans.

‘He made some good pitches in some critical times,’ Harvard-Westlake Coach Matt LaCour said of Thompson (2-0).

Said Thompson: ‘Every game is fun, but this is the one game on our schedule we knew was our big game and came into it like a playoff game.’

The two schools play again on Friday at Alemany.

-- Eric Sondheimer