Empty feeling heading back from Yuma on Saturday night on the team charter.

"We're not playing very good baseball right now" said head coach Anthony Gilich, "we have to fix a few things."

Early on, it's seemingly not the pitching that needs work. Central Arizona got great outings from Jason Nelson in game 1 and Jonathan Stroman in game 2, but the bats aren't there and there is an unsure defensive presence for the Vaqueros. And there's also that timing thing.

"We can't take advantage of the opportunities we have in game situations right now" said Gilich. "We can't get that play or that hit when we need it".

Game one starter Nelson threw well enough to win in his five innings, but with an error here and another little miscue there, he gave up only one earned run out of the six that Western ended up with, in the 6-1 Matadors win. That tells the story about game one when you know that Central recorded only six hits, but so did the Matadors.

"A combination of little errors just magnifies the importance of every single situation in the game" continued Gilich.

And there's not much happening at the plate while Liam Spence has only played in four games from nagging injuries, and hot hitting Clayton Keyes hasn't played in the last three games. The team is hitting only .267 at this point which isn't horrible, but surely there have been better starts. The good news is that opponents are hitting a miniscule .216 against Vaquero pitching.

Hunter Jump had two hits playing right field and leading off in game 1.

You can't ask for much more than nine strikouts and just two walks from game two starter Stroman. However, Central only had four singles in this one for a two game total of ten singles. 

Arizona Western starter Robert Gonzalez did throw a beauty at the Vaqueros, pitching all nine innings. It was a 3-0 shutout.

Central still sits at 4-4 in conference play, hanging in there, and let the tweaking continue. This is one staff that will figure it out, sooner than later.