Offense Arrives; Sanchez Deals to Keep Fire Baseball in the Championship Hunt
LEWISTON, IDAHO-It wasn’t a matter of if, it was a matter of when.
The Southeastern (58-5) offense shook off a slump which had it hitting 80 points below its season average during the Avista NAIA World Series with nine hits, six for extra bases in a 10-3 win over Westmont on Wednesday.
“We finally got it in the mail; I thought we left it in Lakeland for awhile,” said coach Adrian Dinkel of the offense. “We were pretty excited about finally delivering some barrels.”
Defense plagued Westmont (46-9) in the second inning, allowing Gary Lora to get to third after stealing second when the throw got away and after reaching on a throwing error. A third error in the inning allowed Chayce Bryant to reach. Stephen Cullen brought home Lora with an RBI fielder’s choice and Jose Marcano cleared the bases with his seventh home run of the season.
Two batters later, Nicholas Block had the first of his two homers on the day to put the Fire up 4-0.
“We always knew the talent was there, you just had to see if he could lock it in and got the chance today and took advantage of it,” said Dinkel of Block.
That was plenty of run support for starting pitcher JJ Sanchez in his longest outing of the season. Sanchez improved to 5-0 after allowing just one earned run over seven innings of work with seven strikeouts and four walks.
“JJ put us on his back tonight,” said Dinkel. “We expected to get five innings out of him and he turned around and gave us seven. He’s one of the best arms in the country and proved it tonight.”
Sanchez retired 15 of the 18 that he saw over the first five innings, allowing just one hit and two walks.
“I just tried to win each pitch,” said Sanchez. “My team had my back and just kept telling me to throw strikes and tried to fight and empty the tank.”
By the time the Warriors started getting the ball in play and getting on base, it was 10-0 thanks to Chayce Bryant’s third home run of the tournament, a two-run blast in the third, an RBI double by Marcano in the third, Block’s second homer to lead off the fourth, and a two-run double by David Castillo in the fifth.
Westmont’s first run came with two outs in the sixth on a fielding error, then added on in the seventh on an RBI single, and in the eighth on an RBI double.
Bryant and Marcano joined Block with two hits each.
Just three teams remain in play for the red championship banner. Lewis-Clark State receives a bye to Friday’s winner-take-all championship game where they will take on the winner of tomorrow’s rematch between the Fire and Warriors at 9:35 p.m. Eastern.