Indians stopped late
A season ago, the Burroughs High baseball team found itself involved in an underage drinking scandal leading to its season being cut short. That forced the Indians to primarily rebuild their program, which included bringing in a new coach.
Under the guidance of Coach Kiel Holmes, the Indians found themselves on higher ground by finishing fourth in the Pacific League and qualifying for the CIF Southern Section Division II playoffs.
Unfortunately for the Indians, their postseason run was brief as Jarek York hit a three-run home run in the bottom of the seventh inning to lift Ventura to a 4-1 win in a CIF Southern Section Division III wild-card game Tuesday afternoon.
“It’s definitely a good experience to get back [to the playoffs],” Holmes said. “The goal was to make the playoffs and we did that and we battled right to the end against a tough Ventura team.
“I’m proud of the way they overcame a lot of obstacles over the past year. We went out this year and played a very tough schedule and we can build off this.”
Burroughs (12-14) took a 1-0 lead in the fifth when Christian Garia scored Chris Davies with a two-out double. Ventura (15-10) tied the game at 1 in the sixth on a squeeze bunt.
With one out in the seventh, Ventura’s next two batters reached base before York homered to end the contest. Ventura will next meet top-seeded Harvard-Westlake in a first-round game Thursday.
Burroughs starting pitcher Dylan Goldsack went 5 1/3 innings, striking out two and yielding two hits.
Goldsack said he became fatigued in the middle innings by virtue of a high pitch count.
“I tried to pitch well for us,” Goldsack said. “I got ahead in the count and tried to keep us in the game.
“I didn’t know much about Ventura other than they had a decent hitting team. We were able to put what happened last year behind us and we bounced back. We wanted to get that out of our minds.”
Burroughs finished with six hits and left eight on base. Davies contributed two hits for the Indians, who got one apiece from Garia, Chris Peale, Dillion Disiere and Ryan Gordon.