Crean Lutheran second baseman Wyatt Fischer makes the tag on Chris Mosley who was trying to steal a base. No. 1 is shortstop Sho Garcia. Catcher Jackson Haney made the throw. (Photos courtesy Crean Lutheran Shutterbugs / John Luciano, Howard Lyon and Ted Rigoni).
Crean Lutheran High School’s baseball team broke open a close game with six runs in the fifth inning and went on to defeat Sultana 9-6 in a CIF 4A semifinal Tuesday in front of a standing-room-only crowd at Crean Lutheran.
Coach Jake Haney’s top-seeded Saints will meet Canyon in the championship either Saturday at 10 a.m. at Blair Field in Long Beach. It’s the first trip to the finals for the program since 2016.
“It feels good, hats off to these guys,” Haney said after the win. “This starts a long time ago, last summer, in the fall in the weight room and you talk about these goals. We talked about this early, because we knew it was a real possibility, it wasn’t just, ‘let’s say it because we’re supposed to say it.’
“But it’s hard, maybe I’m biased, I think this is the hardest championship to win in all of sports, the baseball championship, it doesn’t matter what division you’re in becaause anything can happen with the guy on the mound and one guy has an unreal day and you go home.
“I was really proud of our guys, their guy got in a little bit of a rhythm about the third inning and we didn’t let him off the hook.”
To see the slide show, click on the first photo:
The Saints got offensive production from every player in the lineup and starting pitcher Wyatt Nichol pitched the first five innings, allowing no earned runs and two hits. He struck out five.
Sultana took advantage of three hit bats, two walks, an error and a base hit to score four runs in the top of the seventh off two relievers to give the Saints a bit of a scare. But the ace of the staff Alex Iida was brought in with two outs and the bases loaded and got Chris Manley to ground out to end the game.
“A win is a win,” said Nichol, who has committed to play at Pepperdine. “It wasn’t exactly how we planned it out there in the last inning but we got it done and limited their hits and hit very well. That was a big, big fifth inning and a great bump (RBI single) by (Wyatt) Fischer in the fifth that ended up being the winning run. It wasn’t pretty, but we got it done and we’re moving on.”
Nichol told Haney he was struggling a bit in the fifth.
“I didn’t have my best stuff today, I had trouble finding the zone a couple times,” Nichol said. “But I was able to get gritty strikes and gritty calls and third baseman Mark Fedro really came up clutch for me and had like four or five nice plays over there a third. I could rely on my defense and didn’t have to strike them all out, only one hit through five.”
Crean Lutheran (24-8) set the tone early with two runs in the first inning off starting pitcher Nico Torres. James Derflinger and Fedro singled. Nichol drove home one run on a groundout and Blake Needelman delivered an RBI single.
Sultana cut the lead to a run with an unearned run in the third but the Saints answered with a run in the bottom of the inning. Fedro walked and came around to score on an infield RBI single by Needelman.
Sultana (18-10) scored another unearned run in the fifth.
But in the bottom of the fifth the Saints used four hits, three walks and a hit batter to push across six runs to take a 9-2 lead. Sho Garcia had a two-run double, Fischer and Derflinger RBI singles, Jack Sand had a sacrifice fly and Needelman drove in a run on a groundout.
Fedro scored three runs and Needelman had three RBI.
Other than the two errors, the Saints made some solid defensive plays.
In the fifth inning, after Manley walked leading off the inning, catcher Jackson Haney threw a perfect throw to Fisher, the second baseman, to catch the runner trying to steal.
Crean Lutheran pinch-hitters Adrien Varela and Lucas Aguirre had singles in the sixth.
Crean Lutheran will be out to bring home the first CIF baseball title for the program. The Saints lost to Sage Hill in the CIF Division 6 championship game in 2016.
Canyon defeated Crean Lutheran 11-3 in a nonleague game this year on April 11. The Comanches (19-12) defeated Linfield Christian 7-3 in the other semifinal Tuesday.
The two OC teams will head to Long Beach this weekend at the home of the Long Beach State Dirtbags for the rematch.
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—Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com
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