Early missed chances haunt CV in 10-1 loss to Burbank
MONTROSE — While it was Burbank’s offense that delivered a lopsided win over Crescenta Valley in the District 16 10-11 All-Star baseball tournament opener, Burbank Coach Thomas Magoon credited the defense as the first spark.
Burbank’s offense exploded for 13 hits against six Crescenta Valley pitchers for a 10-1 victory Saturday at Montrose Community Park.
Five Burbank batters — Carter Kessinger (two for four), Jacob Barrera (two for four, three runs batted in), Gio Zamora (two for three, RBI), Marc Bin (two for three, RBI) and Chris Magoon (two for three, RBI) — logged multi-hit games.
“What started us off was the double plays we had in the first two innings,” said Magoon, whose team managed one hit in the top of the first. “Our offense came out kind of stale in the first inning. We like to be visitors because we like to jump on teams and we weren’t able to do that. I think the defense kick started us and in the third and fourth inning we exploded.”
While the score suggested one team’s domination, CV Coach Tom Harbolt wasn’t convinced.
“We did about 80% of what we needed to do to win,” he said. “That team isn’t better than us, I mean the score stinks, but our defense needs to be crisper and our offense needs to be a little better. We didn’t get it done, but it’s OK.”
Crescenta Valley threatened from the beginning, as Gabe Kessell led off the bottom of the first with an infield single. He was quickly erased, getting doubled up at first on a hard line drive to shortstop.
Justyn Chang gave CV new life with a ground-rule double to center field in the next at bat, but the air was sucked out of its sails again when he was caught stealing third.
Burbank built on the momentum and strung four hits together for two runs in the second. Zamora started it with a one-out double to center field, Brandon Giraldo singled to put runners at the corners and Bin plated Zamora with a chopper up the middle. Magoon capped the inning with a line-drive single to left field that scored Giraldo.
Eli Webber knocked a one-out single up the middle in the bottom of the second, but any potential Crescenta Valley rally was erased on 1-6-3 double-play grounder.
Zamora cashed in Barrera, who singled aboard, with a bloop single to right field for a 3-0 lead in the top of the third. Burbank pushed out to a 4-0 advantage when Max Meltzer, who was walked, scored on a throwing error.
Webber drove in Crescenta Valley’s only run in the bottom of the third when he singled to right field to score Chris Wood, who banged a lead-off ground-rule double to left field.
Five more Burbank runners came around to score in the top of the fourth on a two-RBI Blaine Traxel double and a three-run home run from Barrera.
“It was a fastball,” Barrera said. “I knew it was gone, it was pretty loud.”
Meltzer plated Burbank’s final run with a groundout in the top of the sixth.
Burbank will play Foothill today at Montrose Community Park at 5:30 p.m. The loser of that game will play Crescenta Valley on Monday, and while the loss means a longer road to the district title for CV, Harbolt is far from worried.
“We know we can beat [Burbank],” Harbolt said. “We jumped out and hit the ball really well right from the beginning. They have deeper pitching than we do, but we know we can beat them. … Hopefully we can beat Foothill, I don’t take anyone for granted, and we have to beat these guys two out of three times to win and that’s fine.”
Burbank has different plans.
“We just take it day by day,” Thomas Magoon said of Burbank’s approach to the rest of the tournament. “The kids have one goal and that’s win district. When we get out of district, we move onto sectionals.”