Late-Inning Rallies Turn Tide

After going hitless in his last six at-bats, Antipolo City ACG Joseph Orillana turned it up a notch against Alabang on Sunday. The lanky 22-year old connected for two homeruns and just fell a triple short of the cycle, while driving in a season-high six runs as the ACG swept the season series from Alabang (2-4) with a 13-2 rout.

Antipolo City has won five straight games to open the season.

Earlier, the triumvirate of Sonny Pensaber, Sky Rosales, and Jeff Rodriguez accounted for 16 runs as Marikina (4-1) demolished Loyola Heights (0-5) 22-2 in the season's most lopsided contest to date.

Meanwhile Diliman (5-1) opened the floodgates with six runs in their final at bat against Makati (0-5) for a 13-5 win and season series sweep to close the weekend.

That latter game pretty much summed up a bipolar weekend at the bases.

On Saturday, Rajah Singh's run-scoring infield hit broke a 3-3 deadlock in the fifth inning and the Diliman Maroons went on to score five more runs to beat Alabang's Titans 9-5.

Shortly thereafter, Marikina paved a similar path for Makati's Titans. Arjay Santos' rbi-double broke a 2-2 tie in the fifth and the Golden Bears went on to score three runs in each of the sixth and seventh innings to pull out a 9-3 win.

Later, Antipolo City took advantage of four costly Blue Eagle errors in their last at bat to open a five-run cushion in the eighth inning before having to ground another Loyola Heights ninth inning rally to seal an 8-4 thriller.

It was a weekend's reprisal of the previous two weekends. The average margin of victory during Saturday games is four runs. In contrast, during Sundays of competition, the average run differential between winners and losers is a lofty dozen.