The Baron Varsity baseball team was swept last week in their series against Los Alamitos. In the must win series for the Barons, the boys fell victim to two late inning rallies by the Griffins which secured the first two games of the series.
The Barons lost their first game by a score of 4-5 which was the closest deficit of the three games. Brock Lundquist(‘14) hit a home run in the third inning to put the Barons up 2-4. The next couple of innings the Barons and the Griffins were held to one hit a piece between them.
Then in the bottom of the sixth the floodgates opened for the Griffins. After a double to the warning tracks, coach Ron LaRuffa pulled Monty Plattner(‘13) to put in the closer Tanner Brown(’12).
Plattner pitched a two run game to that point and threw five strikeouts to keep the Griffins at bay.
The first batter Brown faced hit a single to right which put the Griffins in scoring position at third. After beaning the next batter, Brown loaded the bases with no outs. Brown caught a break when the next two batters struck out and flew out . However, a wild pitch to the next batter moved a runner home to bring the Griffins within one.
It was a long single to center by the same batter though that put the Griffins ahead and brought in the game winning run from second to bring the score to 5-4 for the Griffins.
The Barons had no response in the seventh inning; a pattern that emerged throughout the season.
In the second game, the Barons had played more than half of their season and were in a must win position. Tensions were very high and coach LaRuffa was ejected in fourth inning after a trivial catcher interference call.
Although the Barons were not in lack of a fighting spirit, they lost a very strong lead in the seventh inning; the third time this year the Barons have lost a winning game in the last inning of a game.
The fourth inning saw a majority of the action for the Barons. After going down by three runs in the top of the inning, the Barons responded very strongly and started a rally in the bottom of the fourth.
The Barons scored three runs. Tanner Brown(‘12) scored the first run off a ground roll double, and Dylan Persinger(‘14) scored a run off a bunt taking advantage of the poor infield defense of the Griffins. Connor Bitzer(’12) added to the rally by hitting in the tying run off a single. Bitzer then stole a base on the next play but was sent back; LaRuffa challenged the call vehemently and was ejected after taking the argument against the umpire a little too far.
Things flared up again when Mike Hickman(’15) sent a sacrifice fly ball deep into center field to score a run. Bitzer tagged up on the play but the umpire thought opposite and called him out while he thought he was safe at third effectively ending the rally the Barons had going. They took the lead by a score of 4-3 that inning.
In the fifth inning, the Griffins scored one run to tie the game up. An error by first-baseman Lundquist allowed the Griffin batter a double on an infield grounder; he then was bunted over to third. Another blunder, this time a wild pitch, moved him home. There were no more hits in the inning and Tanner Brown who had pitched the whole game threw two strikeouts to retire the side.
The last two inning were a tale of two teams. In the sixth inning, the Barons upped their lead by two. A series of singles and steals by Baron batters, and two errors by the Los Alamitos infield allowed runs from Persinger and Bitzer.
The Barons, fueled by emotion, took the 6-4 lead into the seventh inning which had not treated the Barons well overall this season.
The story line was no different this game. Plattner came in to relieve Brown as closer, but from the first at bat he faced an uphill battle. An early single turned into a run. Four batters later, the bases were teaming with Griffins. Another single broke through the infield scoring two of the runners to put the Griffins ahead by 1,7-6. The last nail was driven hard into the coffin during the next at-bat. With two men on base, a Griffin batter hit a three-run homer which effectively ended the game, the series, and really any playoff hopes the Barons had.
The Barons had no answer in the bottom of the seventh, nor would they in the next game.
In game three of the series at Los Al, the Barons looked deflated starting off with a one-two-three inning on offense and allowing three runs on defense in the first inning. In inning three, the Barons allowed another run off an error in center field and fell further behind with a score of 0-4.
The Barons finally gave an answer in the fourth when Persinger hit an RBI single to score Christian Rodriguez. But that was it; there were no more runs from the offense in the game. In the bottom of the fourth, Los Al pulverized the Barons with three more runs. The Griffins were able to take advantage of poor infielding when a sacrifice bunt turned into a double RBI triple.
The next few innings saw more runs from the Griffins and the season started to slip away from the Barons. The game ended with a final score of 10-1.
The Barons now have a record of 4-10 and sit above only Newport Harbor in the Sunset League; whom they will play this week twice to finish out the season.
