Vintage beats Santa Rosa in home-opener behind third inning rally and solid pitching
By Kyle Foster
Twitter: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews
Minimizing the damage can go a long way in a baseball game.
On Friday afternoon, that pitching was key for the Vintage baseball team in the home-opening 8-2 victory over Santa Rosa.
“Home-openers always a little weird because everyone usually gets a little over-amped,” Vintage coach Rich Anderson explained. “I thought our guys weren’t over-excited.”
Santa Rosa (0-2) scored the game’s first run in the first frame off of a triple and a sacrifice fly. The Panthers only scored once more in the fifth.
The Crushers (1-0) knotted things back up in the bottom of the second when Ian Avalos walked and scored on a Jorge Rios-Lopez RBI groundout.
Then, Vintage opened things up in the third when they pushed six runs across. A big reason as to why they pushed them across was the ability to draw walks and capitalize on them.
“We’ve got to get our guys to believe that,” Anderson added. “I talk to them all the time (and say) ‘you don’t just get hits to get on base. You can get hit by a pitch, you can get a walk, someone can make an error.’”
The Crushers scored three of their runs off of walks in the afternoon.
The rally in the third all started when Gavin Rabanal walked and later scored on a Davide Migotto single. Jake Whipple also walked and then scored on an Avalos single. Migotto came home on a Reid McCaffrey double. Avalos and McCaffrey both scored on a Rios-Lopez triple. Finally, Rios-Lopez scored on a wild pitch.
“It was just loosening up, knowing that we could do this,” Migotto said of the big third inning. “We finally got our confidence back and we just let things go.”
In the fourth, Vintage scored once more when Rabanal singled and scored on a Whipple single.
Whipple also got the win for the Crushers. The senior went three innings, allowing only one earned run while striking out five and just walking one in 42 pitches.
“Honestly, he didn’t let that one hit phase him,” Migotto added. “He’s just a man today. He came back and shut them down.”
“I think you’re right that Jake set the tempo because he gave up the triple and then the next guy hit a ball really hard off of him and they got a RBI on it and it didn’t shake him up a bit,” Anderson said of Whipple’s outing on the bump. “He was just like, ‘it’s a seven-inning game, we haven’t even hit yet.’ He just kept pitching, kept doing his thing.
Vintage will be back in action next Tuesday at 3:30 p.m. when they head to Santa Rosa to face Montgomery.
