Medford Mustangs shortstop Freeman Rountree tags out Lydo’s Lab's Tyson Rather at second base during Game 1 at Harry & David Field Wednesday.

A late rally attempt fell flat for the Medford Mustangs in a 9-7 loss before a 9-4 victory to close a doubleheader against Lydo’s Lab on Wednesday afternoon at Harry & David Field.

The Mustangs (10-3-2) were rolling up 6-1 in the opener headed into the fifth inning before Lydo’s Lab rattled off six runs in the fifth and two runs in the sixth to go ahead, making a game with a breezy lead calling for a response with limited time.

Because of the urgency, Medford batters swung for the fences instead of focusing on the small plays to chip into a 9-6 deficit.

“I don’t think that we got impatient,” said Mustangs head coach John King. “I think that we were just trying to do too much, each guy was trying to do too much instead of keeping the train going from base to base and then if you hit that ball in the gap, you hit it in the gap.”

In the final three innings, Lydo’s Lab had success with pop flies in the outfield to get the easy outs and stall the Mustangs’ offense.

Medford starting pitcher Dominic Daffron agreed with King and believed that the energy went down after the lead change when Tristan Mallari got the Mustangs to a quick 2-1 lead thanks to floating a one-run single into the left infield.

Then in the fourth inning, patience at the plate paid dividends with Freeman Rountree scoring off a passed ball along with Triston Wallace and Kaleb Long being walked in for runs.

“We lost a lot of energy in the middle of the game when we needed it,” Daffron said. “I think we did a good job in the first couple innings of keeping it, and then we lost it.”

“Those walks are huge and when we get runners on base, we have to do our best to hit the ball on the ground,” Daffron added. “We hit a lot of balls in the air. I think we focus on getting the ball on the ground and we’ll be a lot more successful getting those runs.”

The momentum shift happened with Ryan Hill on the mound for Mustangs, allowing five runs and four hits.

King elected to give Hill some run on the mound and knows that the relief pitcher will bounce back and make the most of the next opportunity.

“He was throwing the ball in the zone and they were just hitting it,” King said about Hill. “He’ll get another opportunity to get out there and hopefully next time, he misses the bats.”

Lydo’s Lab also got the ball to roll its way, especially in the top of the sixth inning when Kellen Willer unleashed a hit to deep left field and brought home two runners, which would have brought the score to 9-8.

However, the hit was negated after the Lydo’s Lab dugout called for a foul ball with the ball in a relative blindspot in the left corner of the field and the Mustangs had almost scored both runs. Despite agreeing with the ruling, King would have liked the ruling to have happened earlier in the action.

“I couldn’t tell if it was fair or foul,” said King. “I just asked (the umpire) to make that call sooner, it was a big turning point in that inning for sure.”

Even with the call reversed, King still pointed to errors and how the Mustangs were staring down a 14-6 hit disadvantage at the end of the first game.

“Just too many errors,” the coach said. “Too many errors, which put guys on base and they came up in the fifth inning and we let guys get on with errors and it just snowballed from there.”

Wallace, one of the older players on the team, hopes that some lessons were learned with confidence in tight situations.

The center fielder saw a stout defense in the opening innings, followed by some mistakes that began to build on each other and had some confidence shake.

“We are a young team,” Wallace said. “We were just getting too big and trying to do too much instead of just playing our baseball game.”

“You’ve just got to go out there and have confidence,” he added. “We are gonna make every play, even if we don’t … we have the next pitch. That’s kind of like my mentality that I’m trying to put into these younger kids that it doesn’t matter if you make an error, you’re gonna make the next play.”

The nightcap saw the Mustangs build a 6-1 lead going into the top of the seventh inning before securing the 9-4 triumph — showing more consistency at the plate than the first game to hold a 12-7 hit advantage.

Rountree led the way by going 3-for-4 with two runs and an RBI, while Jackson Rosenthal, Eli Havey and Mallari also contributed two hits each.

Wallace also had an RBI double in the top of the sixth inning to bring in Rountree, and scored two runs of his own.

Mustangs pitcher Evan Rhoden pitched five innings, allowing five hits and only one run in Game 2.