After a thrilling nail-biter victory to advance to the West Zone
Tournament finals for the second year in a row, the Morgan Hill
Colt A
’s didn’t have enough left to pull off the championship at
Valley Christian High in San Jose last weekend. Going up against
the powerful Corona squad, MH more than held its own, matching
rallies with the SoCal team late into the game before falling
11-7.
After a thrilling nail-biter victory to advance to the West Zone Tournament finals for the second year in a row, the Morgan Hill Colt A’s didn’t have enough left to pull off the championship at Valley Christian High in San Jose last weekend.
Going up against the powerful Corona squad, MH more than held its own, matching rallies with the SoCal team late into the game before falling 11-7.
According to MH Manager Dave Newton, starting pitcher Matt Cummins turned in an inspired effort, allowing just two earned runs in 4 1/3 innings of work. But a porous defense let in too many runs.
“That was about as well as I’ve seen him throw,” Newton said. “It’s too bad we couldn’t play defense for him.”
Not that MH let its defensive lapses undermine its effort. After Corona took a 3-0 lead in the first inning, MH came back with a three-spot of its own to tie the game in the third inning.
In the fourth, Corona tallied twice for a 5-3 lead but MH came right back to tie in the top of the fifth on Ryan Evanger’s two-run homer.
But Corona capitalized on MH miscues to rack up six runs in the bottom of the inning for an insurmountable 11-5 lead.
MH added a pair of runs in the sixth on an RBI double by Cummins and an RBI single by Adam Perez.
MH, which lost to Corona on Friday to fall into the loser’s bracket, set up the rematch with its SoCal rivals by beating West Covina in the loser’s bracket finale on Saturday.
In that game, West Covina took a 4-0 first-inning lead and led 6-2 after two before MH rallied. Tallying four runs in the bottom of the second, MH tied the game at 6-6 on RBI singles from Hill, Cummins and Perez, and an RBI sacrifice fly from Evanger. Covina answered with a run in the third to take a 7-6 lead, but MH scored four of its own in the third to take a 10-7 lead. The big blows were Billy Hill’s bunt that was thrown down the rightfield lone to score two, Cummins’ RBI double and Evanger’s RBI sac fly. MH would add a pair of runs in the fifth on Danny Nelson’s RBI single and a run-scoring error to cap its scoring. And, the local squad would need all those runs as Covina rallied for four runs in the top of the seventh inning, and had the potential tying and winning runs at second and third, respectively, before the final out.
Meanwhile, the Pony 14-year-old all-star team capped its postseason with a pair of losses in the Regional Tournament at Los Altos’ Rosita Park last weekend. After winning its opener last week, the MH Pony 14s fell to Campbell 7-6 on Saturday, then lost to Redding 12-2 on Sunday.
