Cleveland tops Farmington 16-10 in district baseball slugfest

Cleveland’s 16-10 win over Farmington at Ricketts Park did more than light up the scoreboard. The Storm’s surge in the middle innings helped reshape a District 1-5A race that has been bunched up for weeks, and it left the Scorpions with another costly loss in a crowded field where every result now carries postseason weight.

The decisive stretch came after Farmington had moved in front 4-2. Cleveland answered with eight runs in the fourth inning, a burst that flipped the game and put the Scorpions under pressure for the rest of the night. Anthony Del Angel delivered the biggest swing of the frame with a grand slam, part of a 34-hit game that became a test of both lineups and both pitching staffs. Del Angel, last season’s New Mexico Gatorade Baseball Player of the Year and a University of Oklahoma commit, remained the center of Cleveland’s offense as the Storm kept adding to the lead.

Peyton Noel also gave Cleveland a lift from the bottom of the order, going 4-for-5 while batting ninth. Rock Kalcich, LaTavien Howard and Danny Hagstrom were among the other Storm players mentioned in the attack, as Cleveland kept finding traffic on the bases and turned a one-sided inning into a cushion Farmington never fully erased. By the time the Storm finished pulling away in the seventh, the game had moved from a back-and-forth contest to a result that could be felt in the district standings.

That matters in San Juan County because Farmington’s district path has already been unforgiving. Piedra Vista’s win over the Scorpions on April 14 had created a three-way tie at the top of District 1-5A with five games left, and Farmington coach Jeff Kiraly had already noted there was still a lot of baseball left to play. Cleveland’s win, paired with Piedra Vista’s 10-7 loss at Cibola, left Rio Rancho alone in first place.

A standings update on April 17 showed just how narrow the margin had become, with Cleveland at 15-1 in district play, Rio Rancho at 11-4, Piedra Vista at 10-1 and Farmington at 1-9. For the Scorpions, that means the challenge is no longer just one bad inning at Ricketts Park. It is the broader reality of a district race where pitching depth, defensive clean innings and timely hitting are now deciding who can still push for favorable seeding in the final stretch.