Baseball: Lightning strikes late
ARCADIA — Christopher Goul misplaying a single in left field led to him saving Sage Hill School’s season.
Right when it seemed as if Arcadia Rio Hondo Prep was about to stun the top-seeded Lightning in walk-off fashion in the second round of the CIF Southern Section Division 6 baseball playoffs, Goul quickly turned a negative into a positive. He stayed with the play, never giving up.
With Rio Hondo Prep sending the runner home for the potential game-winning run after Goul didn’t field the ball correctly, Goul recovered in time. The senior threw a perfect strike to home plate, where catcher Tobias Bush tagged the runner out to force extra innings on Tuesday.
The defensive play sparked Sage Hill’s offense right away in the top of the eighth.
Parker Reposa led off with a single and Conner Bock followed that up by pulling a two-run home run down the right-field line. Sage Hill added another run in the inning to secure a 5-2 come-from-behind win at Rio Hondo Prep.
If not for Goul’s throw, Coach Dominic Campeau said Sage Hill (20-6) doesn’t have a chance to advance to the quarterfinals for the first time in five years. Sage Hill has reached this stage for only the second time in the program’s history, tying a single-season record for wins in the process.
Sage Hill’s quarterfinal game is on Friday at 3:15 p.m. Wednesday’s second-round game between Sherman Oaks Buckley and Nuevo Nuview Bridge will determine whom Sage Hill plays and where it plays in the quarterfinals.
Buckley was unable to eliminate Sage Hill early in the postseason last year. Rio Hondo Prep (17-6), the third-place team from the Prep League, almost pulled off the second-round upset against the Lightning this year.
With two outs and runners on first and second in the bottom of the seventh, Stephen Martin singled to left field. Rio Hondo Prep first waved Hudson Barrett home from second, but Barrett lost his balance rounding the third-base bag. He stopped, only to take off for home when Goul didn’t have the ball.
Goul picked up the ball that went underneath his glove and the ball never touched the ground again. His throw to Bush made it just before Barrett slid home. The one person with the best view, other than the home plate umpire, was pitcher Kellen Ochi, who was backing up the throw.
“I was just so worried about it,” said Ochi, who earned his first win after his longest outing of the season, throwing 4 1/3 innings of shutout ball in which he allowed one hit, struck out three and walked three. “I don’t think I can repeat what I was thinking in my head. The first thing that popped in my head was, ‘Oh, geez! There’s a play at the plate and I need to get back there.’ The tag that [Bush] laid on the guy [in his mid-torso area] ... was just a hard tag. You could hear it. It was just a thud.”
The bang-bang play is one Ochi desperately needed. The senior blanked Rio Hondo Prep for the fourth straight inning after he relieved Bock, the starter who gave up two runs on three hits and walked three in three innings.
The matchup featured two starting left-handed pitchers. While Rio Hondo Prep’s Sampson Sly-Hoar went four more innings than Bock and struck out six, one more than Bock, Bock was the one who won the head-to-head battle in the eighth.
After giving up a first-pitch single to Reposa to start the eighth, Sly-Hoar fell behind 2-0 in the count against Bock. On the next offering by Sly-Hoar, Bock turned on it and deposited it over the right-field fence for his sixth homer of the year.
“Late in the game I knew he was going to come back with a fastball,” said Bock, who went two for four with two runs batted in. “He had been struggling a little bit with the off-speed pitch against me. I figured I was getting the fastball and I was ready for it.”
Facing Sly-Hoar, a 6-foot-9 junior, gave Sage Hill issues for most of the contest, as did the field at Rio Hondo Prep. The outfield was drastically different than anything Sage Hill had seen before this season. From left-center to right-center field, there was no wall, just a netting almost as high as a telephone pole. The warning track also featured a hill.
The configurations seemed to startle the Academy League champion Lightning at the start, which turned out to be an inauspicious one for the visitors.
The first inning began well, Ochi reached base with one out because of catcher’s interference. He made it to second base after a steal, but Reposa was unable to bring him home, as Sly-Hoar struck out Reposa looking with an off-speed pitch.
Without having to throw a pitch, Sly-Hoar (10-5) got out of the inning. He picked off Ochi at second base.
The mistakes by Sage Hill on the base pads continued in the second inning. The next one came after Cole Tait recorded the first of the team’s seven hits off Sly-Hoar. Tait doubled toward the right-field line, and he tried to go for a triple, only to be thrown out at third base for the second out.
Rio Hondo Prep played it more conservatively when it appeared it produced extra-base hits in the third inning, and the strategy worked, helping it strike first.
After Martin recorded his team’s first hit, Gabe Shriver blasted a 0-2 pitch off the netting in right-center field for a long single. Martin moved to third, and then Rio Hondo Prep had runners in scoring position with Shriver swiping second.
A pitch later, Clark Bollinger smashed a shot to right-center field and Jack Pelc gave it chase, before the center fielder fell down while trying to run up the hill toward the net. Martin easily scored to make it 1-0, and Shriver held up at third base.
Shriver tried coming home two pitches later on a suicide squeeze play that Eric Mosher missed, forcing Shriver to retreat to third. Bush threw out Shriver going back to third, where Brett Super applied the tag.
Rio Hondo Prep still managed to take a 2-0 lead in the third. A wild pitch on ball four to Mosher allowed Bollinger to score.
The two-run deficit marked the first for Sage Hill since March 27, when it trailed, 2-0, in the first inning against Brethren Christian. Sage Hill came back and won the second game of what is now a 15-game winning streak. Super got the final two outs to earn his second save.
“It was close,” said Bock, who saw Super single in a run in the fourth to cut the deficit in half against Rio Hondo Prep, and two innings later, Tait tied it with an RBI sacrifice fly. “We’ve been fortunate to have some games where we’ve been able to take a lead early, and I think this is the first time in a while we’ve started from behind. It just shows how determined we are to … fight back … to win a game.”
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CIF Southern Section Division 6 playoffs
Second round
Sage Hill 5, Rio Hondo Prep 2
SCORE BY INNINGS
Sage Hill 000 101 03 – 5 9 0
Rio Hondo 002 000 00 – 2 4 2
Bock, Ochi (4), Super (8) and Bush; Sly-Hoar, Chico (8) and Bollinger. W – Ochi, 1-0. L – Sly-Hoar, 10-5. Sv – Super. 2B – Tait (SH). HR – Bock (SH).