Napa’s offense comes to life in late innings to stay alive in state tournament
By Kyle Foster
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
YOUNTVILLE-The Napa Valley Baseball Club 17U team showed Friday morning that no game is ever over until that final out is recorded as they came back from a six run deficit to beat Fairfield by a score of 14-10.
“It feels great because we had our backs against the wall, we knew we had to win this game to keep moving forward, and it’s a big win for us,” NVBC third baseman Reid Mccaffrey said of the win.
The first inning was a mirror image of the day before when NVBC spotted their opponent four runs.
Fairfield also scored two runs in the second, fourth, and seventh.
NVBC (34-12) got their first runs of the game in the bottom of the second. A Reid Mccaffrey single brought home Logan Nothmann who singled and Jacks Madigan who walked.
In the bottom of the fifth Napa came to life. They sent ten batters to the plate and five of them scored. The inning was highlighted by a Mccaffrey single to bring NVBC within a run of Fairfield.
Napa put the game away in the bottom of the sixth, which was an inning where they scored seven runs. Noah Young’s two out two RBI double brought in NVBC’s final runs on the day.
Jake Whipple got the win for Napa. Over 4 and ⅔ innings of work he walked six and struck out six.
“He did,” NVBC coach Jason Schnaible explained of the good work that Whipple did. “Jake’s usually been our closer throughout a majority of the summer. The situation that we were in there I think down by six runs it was kinda the we don’t have anything to lose, we’re not going to leave a bullet in the gun and he’s one of our bullets and we put him on the mound and he did an excellent job. There was actually a time when I went out to make a pitching change and he wasn’t willing to give up the ball and he wanted to finish what he started and he did a great job on the mound for us today.”
NVBC was led on offense by Mccaffrey (2-for-5 double, single, four RBIs), Young (2-for-3 double, single, two walks, three RBIs), and Owen Schnaible (2-for-3 double, single, walk, RBI).
“I just had to be smart,” Mccaffrey said of his approach at the plate. “I knew it was a small strike zone and I only hit strikes.”
Napa will play at 9 a.m again Saturday morning, but if they win that game they’ll play later on that day at 3 p.m. On the other hand if Napa loses anymore games their season is over.
“Hopefully nothing changes from what happened call it from the third inning on today,” Schnaible said of the mindset of playing another game in the a.m. “The never die attitude, I think what I saw you know second, third inning, I don’t know if it was ten o’clock and they woke up, but right about that time I think we came together as a team, we had the we’re not willing to go home now, we’re here to play (attitude), so I’m excited. You know we still have a lot of pitchers that we haven’t used. That’s one thing that’s one of our strengths is having a deep pitching staff and you know it’s going to take four more wins to win this thing. There’s a good chance we would have to play two tomorrow, two on Sunday and we’ve got the arms to do it.”
