Rattlers baseball hits the ground running

The Otto Rattlers baseball season is underway and both the majors and minors teams have a few games under their belts.

With seven returning players and seven new to the program this year, the Rattlers minor team has three wins and one tie on their record, tying once with Greybull and beating both Lovell teams and a young combined Greybull team.

All of Greybull’s fourth graders were gone on a field trip so the Minors played a combined team with all of the younger minors players last week. Otto won 15-1, getting runs from Tuck Neves, Gage Tolman, Brigham Winters and Cruz Allen in the first inning, Vanessa Winters, Adalyn Winters, Jax Morgan and Leah Kebler in the second inning, as well as T. Neves, Tolman, B. Winters, Camryn Ellison and Allen and V. Winters and Morgan.

Allen and B. Winters shared pitching for the four innings. “Greybull had some very young pitchers that hadn’t pitched much, especially in a game,” said Coach Janalee Call. “We got some good base running practice, but not much batting practice.”

Otto’s majors team has 11 returning players and has lost their three first games against Greybull and two Lovell teams. The majors lost 6-0 in Greybull and 5-2 against the Lovell Cubs.

The game against the Lovell Yankees was rescheduled for last Tuesday and the Rattlers lost 14-4. Brooklyn Winters, Jaxon Buck, Davin Buck and Bret Winters earned the runs for Otto and Porter Aagard. B. Winters and Nicholas Worthen shared the mound. “We couldn’t get our bats going for this game. We would hit the ball, but not with much force or consistency. Lovell loved our pitchers and the field just didn’t support their pitchers well. There weren’t major mistakes, just little babbles with fielding and it allowed the Lovell runners to make it on base. We also didn’t catch some pop flies for easy outs like we should have.”

The majors and minors played in Thermopolis on Tuesday night and will play Lovell at home on June 3rd with the minors at 5:30 and the majors at 7 p.m.