Worth the wait: 10th-inning walk-off win sends Estancia baseball to CIF Division 6 final
Trevor Scott came through in maybe the toughest test of his prep baseball career, working out of several difficult situations — with help from his defense — while matching Santa Ynez ace Jackson Cloud with seven shutout innings.
He came up bigger an hour later by taking a pitch.
Estancia advanced to its first CIF Southern Section baseball championship game Tuesday when Scott drew a bases-loaded, full-count walk with two out in the bottom of the 10th inning, giving the second-seeded Eagles a 1-0 win in a Division 6 semifinal game that will live long in school lore, regardless of how this weekend’s title clash plays out.
“I told the guys they’re going to talk about that one for years,” Estancia coach Nate Goellrich said. “They’re going to get together [and reminisce about this win]. I had those games in high school and college, and that’s what we talk about: that one moment, that one play in the big game, and each guy contributed here in some way. That’s the great thing about it.”
Estancia (27-5), which had just two base runners before the seventh inning and managed just three hits, and only one of them — a first-inning lead-off double by Jack Moyer — against Cloud, pulled out a stunning victory in front of a huge, vibrant crowd that had been on its feet since the game hit extra innings. Its reward is a showdown with No. 5 Anaheim (21-9-1), a 4-1 winner over Bellflower, at 10 a.m. on Saturday at Cal State Fullerton.
Santa Ynez (17-12), buoyed by a vocal following that made the three-and-a-half hour trek from Santa Barbara County, had repeatedly challenged Scott and the Estancia defense. The Pirates put seven runners in scoring position in the first seven innings and another in the ninth, and Cloud’s masterful performance left the home team mostly lunging at his devastating slider.
Cloud couldn’t go forever, exiting after notching his 13th strikeout to start the eighth, and the Eagles got their chance in the 10th against reliever Victor Heredia. Cloud (9-1) this season posted a 0.94 ERA and struck out 130 in 94⅔ innings, but Heredia came in with a 1.67 WHIP, and after striking out four and surrendering one single to get through the ninth, things got away from him.
Blake Peck and John Uchytil drew full-count walks to start the 10th, and Andrew Mits — Estancia’s No. 1 pitcher, who took over from Scott in the eighth — followed with a delicious bunt single that died about halfway down the third-base line to load the bases.
Heredia struck out Jack Moyer and Miles Moyer, then threw a first-pitch strike to Scott. The next three pitches just missed, and Scott took a strike on a 3-1 count. The last throw was just low, and the Eagles were celebrating as Peck trotted home.
Scott’s aim was “see the ball, hit the ball,” but he had to be patient.
“I knew the kid didn’t have his off-speed [pitch]. He couldn’t locate it,” Scott said. “So I knew if he threw something that had some offspeed on it, I was going to take and I was going to try to sit on his fastball. Luckily, he just had a [difficult time] trying to find the zone, and, I don’t know, I’m just speechless about the whole thing.
“I don’t know how to describe it. It was an amazing feeling.”
Warren Dickey, who guided Santa Ynez to the Division 5 title eight years ago, was complimentary.
“Hats off to them. They matched us pitch for pitch, and they were one pitch better than us,” he said. “The sting, we’ll get over it.”
It certainly didn’t come easy. The Eagles struggled to do anything against Cloud, who got out of his first-inning dilemma when Jack Moyer was tagged out in a rundown after his brother grounded to the third baseman. He then retired 13 in a row before walking Andrew Coyotzi on four pitches with one out in the fifth. Nothing came of that. He struck out the side in the sixth, and Estancia then got its chance.
First baseman Caleb Cassidy dropped a routine pop-up with one out in the seventh, and Cloud plunked Cole Lefebvre and Peck to load the bases with two out. Uchytil’s pop out to second sent the game past regulation.
The Pirates got eight hits, six of them off Scott, getting runners to second following lead-off singles in the third, fourth and fifth innings. Immaculate defense kept them scoreless, with Coyotzi, the center fielder, making the biggest play in the fifth, tracking down Heredia’s blast to the wall with two on and doubling up Ben Flores, who failed to tag up at second.
“That’s the beauty of our field,” Goellrich said. “We’ve set our outfield up with athletes, knowing it’s not going to fly out of here, so when the ball went up, I knew that Andrew was going to catch it. Just very fortunate that their guy on second didn’t [tag up], so we took advantage of it. ... We know our field, we know how it is, and great play by him.”
Santa Ynez loaded the bases with two out on two full-count walks and Tanner Padfield’s single, but Scott got Flores to ground to third, with Lefebvre getting the force at the bag, then struck out three in the seventh, the last after a walk and stolen base put a runner at second.
Mits (10-4) worked out of trouble after giving up a single in the eighth and a single and walk in the ninth, then retired the Pirates in order in the 10th — with two terrific throws from Scott on ground outs to third — to set the scene for the finale.
“It’s really crazy,” Mits said when it was over. “I was almost tearing up over there [in the postgame meeting], knowing that we have a shot to do something that no one’s ever done before — no one in this school has ever done before, and we have a shot at it.”
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