Something occurred to Nick Sorrell, so he turned to an assistant coach in the Halliwell Park dugout.

I don’t think I’ve seen as bad of an at-bat that he had earlier in the game, Sorrell said.

The Post 4 Runnin’ Rebels skipper was referring to his starting catcher, Martin Serrano, a reliable hitter who had been slumping over the past few games. During Wednesday’s Game 2 against Skyline, it showed no signs of letting up, concluding with the approach Sorrell told another coach about.

“We were like, what are we gonna do?” Sorrell said.

That’s about when Serrano loaded up, turned on an inside fastball and detonated it over the right-field fence, a three-run home run that punctuated the Rebels’ 11-7 win over the Grizzlies. That followed the hosts’ 10-0 win in the first game of this doubleheader. All told, Serrano climbed out of his slump at the right time, helping his club win each of its first two home games of the summer.

“We were just trying to get back on track. We were trying to get our swings right,” Sorrell said. “We’re trying to build some depth in our pitching staff as well. Pretty much everything we did tonight went to plan, other than the second game, when we had a bunch of defensive mistakes. Other than that, it was what we wanted.”

Thing is, Sorrell knows every game won’t go like these two did. The Rebels will win games and lose games, succeed and struggle, deliver crucial hits and yield critical walks. That’s why he acknowledged his club isn’t where he wants it to be, not in the beginning of June: “We’re getting there,” he said. “From last Friday to today, we started to figure some things out, especially offensively.”

The receipt is in the results. Since the Rebels dropped their season-opener, a 4-1 setback against Upper Valley, they’ve reeled off five straight wins: 8-4 over Upper Valley, 3-0 and 5-2 against Nampa, then these two victories over Skyline Wednesday night. In Game 1, three different players recorded multi-hit games. Jayce Vaughan went 2-for-4 and Luke Davis supplied a 3-for-3 outing.

Then there was designated hitter Gunner Wilhelm, who posted a 2-for-3, two-RBI day. For Sorrell and the rest of the coaching staff, the outing cemented what they already know about the Highland rising senior: The dude can hit.

This last spring, Wilhelm batted a scintillating .500 for the Rams, registering 41 RBI on a 1.192. He earned the Journal’s Sports Stars Baseball Player of the Year award. By all accounts, he’s one of the state’s best hitters — if not the best — and he has the numbers to match.

Which is why when you hear that this his first summer with the Rebels, your first reaction might go something like, what?

“Yeah, he kinda came out of nowhere,” Sorrell said. “He’s a kid that works really hard at everything. He had a breakout spring, and it’s one of those things where it’s like, I gotta have him. I can’t not have that bat in the lineup.”

That’s the thing about the Rebels’ team, though. Wilhelm might swing one of the state’s hottest bats, but that’s not what playing legion ball is all about, not exactly. On Wednesday, he tossed three innings of relief. He allowed two runs on one hit, walked four and fanned three. To Sorrell, it’s important to get guys playing all around the diamond, that way 1) everybody has a good time and 2) he can identify the right positions for his players, even if that means asking them to try something new.

On that front, he’s training his lens on the pitching mound. The list of pitchers he relies on looks like this: Highland’s Colton Sneddon, Trem Tolman and TJ Edgington, Pocatello’s Brody Burch and Mack Evans. “Those are our five main guys that I can throw out there,” Sorrell said, “and I know exactly what’s gonna happen.”

So what Sorrell really wants to do is find the other guys who can fill the holes. On Wednesday evening, he trotted out players like JD Gunderson, Wilhelm and Luke Davis.

“Those are three guys that we’re gonna have to just use here and there,” Sorrell said. “Spot relief, coming into big-time situations and getting us out. We know with all the pitch counts and things like that, they’re gonna be used. As we go through this summer, especially since we play 50 games, everybody’s gonna pitch at some point.”

Sorrell can only hope his guys can avoid giving up the kinds of tanks that Serrano unleashed.