After thrilling victories Friday, local teams will play the
deciding game of their three-part season series at 3:30 p.m.
Wednesday
MORGAN HILL — Live Oak and Sobrato are heading into their showdown this week on emotional highs after both clubs triumphed Friday in walk-off fashion.
Michael Schreiber’s RBI double in the ninth inning clinched a 5-4 victory over Leigh for the Acorns, winners of five straight. Across town, Ryan Williams’ run-scoring base hit lifted the Bulldogs past Pioneer 2-1 at Sobrato High School.
Both victories kept alive respective goals for the Morgan Hill teams, who will play the deciding game of their three-part season series at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday, having split the first two meetings.
Live Oak (11-9 overall, 6-8 league), suddenly the hottest team in the tough Mount Hamilton Division, heads into round-robin league play in sixth place but controlling its destiny to make the postseason. The Acorns trail Pioneer and Westmont — their next two opponents after this week — by a game or less with seven league contests remaining.
“We’ve turned it around. Now, we still have a lot to play for,” Live Oak manager Mark Cummins said Monday. “It took a lot of hard work for us get here. We hope to get into the playoffs. Once you get there, anything can happen.”
The Mount Hamilton’s top four finishers will earn invites to the Central Coast Section playoffs.
Sobrato (9-11, 8-6) can still win the pennant but will need help overcoming Leland’s three-game lead. The first-place Chargers — ranked No. 15 by the San Jose Mercury News — will visit SHS on Friday, wrapping up a seismic week for the second-place Bulldogs.
Sobrato kept pace Friday on an afternoon in which they could have dropped as far as fifth. They rose to beat Pioneer (8-10, 7-7) behind a May-caliber effort by Chris Bradley, who pitched a one-hitter with 10 strikeouts. The lefty gave up the tying run in the fourth after Alex Hagiperos homered an inning earlier.
At Sarich Field, Live Oak continued its late-season push with 13 hits against the eighth-place Longhorns (3-15-1, 3-10-1). Senior infielder Ken Hall provided a double and two singles, upping his batting average to .344, and also drove in a run. Cody Van Aken chipped in two knocks for his third straight multihit game, and Ryan Hennings, Schreiber and freshman Aiden Styczynski also had a pair of hits.
Van Aken (3-3) struck out four and scattered three hits in four shutout innings to get the win after starter Jakob Conlan went five innings.
Rich Martinez, Live Oak’s junior ace, will start Wednesday and likely face Williams or Bryan Bradley — both rightys.
The Bulldogs won last year’s “El Toro Series” two games to one.
“We didn’t get to see much of their top pitchers in our last two games with them, but we know what kind of pitching they’ve got,” Cummins said. “Hopefully, we battle; Richie throws strikes and we come through with timely hits, doing the same things we’ve been doing lately.”
