Flintridge Prep baseball falls in wild, windy extra-inning first-rounder at Highland
PALMDALE — Through wind and rallies, comebacks and stranded runners, big hits and bigger pitches, ejections, raucous fans and 11 innings, the Flintridge Prep and Highland baseball teams went back and forth.
Not until the game had stretched passed three hours with the dawn beginning to draw near did it all end.
And with it came the conclusion of the Rebels’ season as they were defeated on the strength of senior Nick Landa’s walk-off double with no outs in the bottom of the 11th inning to send Highland to a 6-5 win over Prep in the first round of the CIF Southern Section Division V playoffs Friday evening.
“It’s always a tough one, especially when we have our seniors who did all they could for us,” Rebels coach Guillermo Gonzalez said.
Flintridge Prep (14-9), which finished third in the Prep League, struggled early and fell behind, 1-0, in the first and trailed, 2-1, after the third, but came up big with a three-run fourth.
Highland (15-12), which took second in the Golden League but played just two nonleague games and went 2-0, rallied right back to tie it in the fourth.
In the sixth, the Rebels forged back ahead with a 5-4 lead and were two outs from the second round when Romeo Carrillo sent a solo home run to opposite-field right to send the game to extras. And then came Landa’s heroics and histrionics as he sent a shot to deep center field with runners on first and second and flipped his bat sky high on his way to first where he was shortly mobbed by teammates.
Rebels senior starter Nick Davis threw five innings, allowing four runs (one earned) on five hits and three walks with five strikeouts. He added two hits and two runs. Senior Aidan Schraeder pitched 4 1/3 innings of relief and pitched into the 11th when he was replaced after giving up a single and walk, but had held the Bulldogs to just one run before the end of the game.
Thomas Kosakowski (two hits, two runs, one run batted in) and Bradley Marelich (two hits, run) had multi-hit games for the Rebels, who stranded nine runners and most notably came up with little during their biggest chances.
In their big top of the fourth, they had four straight singles to start the stanza, but had two outs at home plate with a runner trying to score on a wild pitch that ran up the line and a runner trying to score from second on a single to left who was out by a mile.
In the fifth, Prep loaded the bases with no outs but a Robbie Case groundout to the catcher to score Germaine Harvey accounted for the only run and the 5-4 lead.
Highland stranded even more runners (10), including loading the bases in the bottom of the 10th with one out. Schraeder clutched up and struck out two in a row to keep the game going for one more inning.
Davis and Schraeder were holdovers from the 2015 Rebels team that won the program’s only CIF championship, which came in Division VI. The season after, the Rebels were back in the semis.
But last year, they lost to Arroyo Grande in the Division IV first round as all that success moved the Rebels up due to realignment. This season, the end came in Division V with Prep boasting a student body of 404 to Highland’s 2,738.
Friday’s game was also played in a loud and contentious environment.
Prep’s coaches, fans and players took exception to the home plate umpire’s strike zone and a Prep assistant was ejected.
Highland fans took exception to much that Prep did and were loud and chippy throughout as the crowd grew through the game with more students filling both sides of the stands. One Highland spectator was also ejected.
Meanwhile, on the adjacent football field just a few feet away there was a student event with music blaring throughout the last half of the game.
“We’ve kind of been through that before,” Gonzalez said. “Our biggest thing is keeping to ourselves and playing our game. I think we did that for the most part.”
For the most part, Flintridge Prep matched its opponent from a much larger school all until a fateful 11th inning.
Twitter: @TCNGrantGordon
