The best team in the Verde Valley Little League had a long climb to get to the top.
“Last year, we were not very good,” said Brandon Figy, head coach of the Diamondbacks, who finished 3-17 in 2013. “But we kept working at it.”
After a season-ending 14-0 win Tuesday, June 3, over the fifth-place Tigers at Riverfront Park, the team is atop the majors with a 14-1 record, three games ahead of the second-place Rangers.
“We got three 12-year-olds in the draft, including our top pitcher, Joe Machado,” Figy said. “We had to draft five players, which definitely helped us out. It’s a 9- to 12-year-old league, and we have eight kids that are 12.”
One of those is three-year team veteran Grant Owings, whose home run to left field to lead off the second inning against the Tigers got the seventh run for the Diamondbacks, who have outscored their opponents by a nearly three-to-one ratio behind a .424 team batting average. Another 12-year-old, Eduardo Lazaro, allowed two hits in the Diamondbacks’ four-inning win — their eighth by 10 or more runs.
For the full story, please see the Wednesday, June 4, issue of the Cottonwood Journal Extra.
