Vintage’s playoff hopes take a hit after losing regular-season finale to Petaluma
By Kyle Foster
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
Everyone wants to be in the playoffs.
But, for the Vintage baseball team their chances of making the playoffs were diminished following a 5-2 loss to Petaluma.
“We already beat Petaluma omce, and Petaluma is ranked pretty high in the section right now I think,” Vintage coach Rich Anderson said of his teams playoff chances. “If we would’ve had two wins against Petaluma that would’ve been huge. That would’ve been huge as far as playoffs go.”
Petaluma (14-10 overall, 8-4 Vine Valley Athletic League) notched the first runs of the contest when they scored a run apiece in the first and third innings.
The Crushers (11-13, 6-6 VVAL) scored their first run of the game in the bottom of the fifth when Luke Leachman singled and scored when Ethan Hemmerlin reached on an error.
Vintage scored their final run of the game the next inning in the sixth when Davide Migotto doubled and scored on a Eli Wood single.
The Trojans scored three more in the top half of the sixth that was highlighted by a Garett Lewis two-run home run to left field.
Owen Schnaible start for Vintage and went three innings and walked two. The sophomore allowed only two runs to cross in the contest.
Wood pitched the remaining four innings of the game. He struck out two and walked one, and also allowed three runs to cross.
According to Anderson Petaluma simply just played a better game.
“Petaluma played a good game,” he explained. “I thought their kid pitched well today. I thought our guys competed against him, but I though their kid pitched really well today. They had some big hits, and that one kid on the bases just he might’ve had four stolen bags. But his skill is running and he took advantage of it, and their guys drove the ball really well.”
Before the game started the Crushers honored their nine seniors that consists of Sebastian Dennis, Felix Ortiz, Troy Ghisletta, Max Phipps, Wood, Leachman, Zach Joson, Jaime Hernandez, and Gunnar Deyoung.
“This group of seniors some of them started quite a bit and then got beat out by sophomores,” Anderson said of the foundation his nine seniors laid. “They handled themselves with total class the whole time. Great teammates, of course they wanted to play more, but they never rooted against their teammates, they never caused any problems, they were super positive, and then when they became role players they played their roles pretty darn well. We are super impressed with them.”
Although it’s not official that Vintage is eliminated from playoff contention both teams will find out their playoff fates when the CIF North Coast Section releases the brackets. You can view the brackets here.
