Antelope Valley Gets the Hits but Misses in Clutch

It was a painfully familiar scene for the Antelope Valley High baseball team.

The Antelopes had runners at first and second with two out in the seventh inning of Friday’s Southern Section 3-A Division quarterfinal playoff game against visiting La Mirada but failed to score.

The wasted opportunity not only ended Antelope Valley’s season with an 11-6 loss, it summed up the Antelopes’ inability to hit consistently with runners in scoring position against the Matadores.

Antelope Valley (15-10), the Golden league champion, had 13 hits, but the Antelopes left 10 runners on base, including eight in scoring position.

Antelope Valley loaded the bases with one out in the first but failed to score when La Mirada (20-6-1) turned a home-to-first double play on a ground ball to third.

The Antelopes scored a pair of runs in the third inning to take a 3-2 lead, but the advantage could have been larger. Runners were left at second and third.

Trailing, 6-3, Antelope Valley scored twice in the fifth to narrow its deficit to a run, but again the Antelopes stranded runners at second and third.

“We just didn’t get the big hit when we needed it,” Antelope Valley Coach Ed t’Sas said. “We won a lot of games this season when the other team out-hit us, but today it was the other way around.

“They got the crucial hits when they needed them and we didn’t.”

Antelope Valley’s three-man pitching rotation of Rick Nickols, Chris Abbey and Raul McNaughton also appeared to have finally run out of gas, and the Antelope defense committed three errors.

Nickols (4-2) went the first four-plus innings, giving up five runs--three earned--on six hits before giving way to Abbey, who allowed one run in two-thirds of an inning.

Leading, 6-5, after five innings, La Mirada scored five runs--three earned off McNaughton in the sixth--before Nickols returned to retire four of the last five batters he faced.

“Looking back, maybe I should have stayed with Nickols longer,” t’Sas said. “But the kid told me he was tired and I thought Chris could close it out for us.”

Abbey struggled, however, and things really came unglued for Antelope Valley in the sixth.

With the bases loaded, a wild pitch scored the first run to give La Mirada a 7-5 lead, and another run scored on a bunt. An error and two hits meant three more runs.

Peter Holt and Von VanLeeuwen each had three hits for Antelope Valley.

“There were a lot of things we could have done but didn’t,” said Antelope Valley catcher Jack Cox, who had two hits and scored twice. “We’ve won all season as a team and today we lost as one.”