Fountain Valley baseball falls to Fullerton in CIF Division 2 playoffs
Fountain Valley overcame two deficits in its CIF Southern Section baseball playoff opener. The chance to rally from a third would not come.
The Barons’ surprising campaign came to an end Friday afternoon on a bases-loaded sacrifice fly in the bottom of the seventh inning, a 5-4 defeat at Freeway League champion Fullerton composed of myriad missteps, not all of them theirs.
Twice they fought back from two runs down, but it was the deadliest part of Fullerton’s lineup — the Nos. 9 through 4 hitters, on this day — took on at the finish, and it didn’t go their way.
“[Fullerton is] a solid team, and we battled all game,” said UC Irvine-bound right-hander Tim Grack, who struggled early but retired 11 of the last 13 batters he faced before departing after six innings. “That’s what we’ve done all year, battled and come back when we’re losing. Unlucky way to end, but that’s how it goes sometimes.”
Fountain Valley (15-12) was down by two runs before recording its first out, gave up two more, in the third, as soon as it had caught up, then evened things again in a fittingly wild fifth inning of an odd, tense clash highlighted by a hidden-ball trick that worked and then didn’t — timeout had been called, just not communicated to the players and two of the umpires — and an umpire’s-interference call that cost the Barons a run.
It ended with cleanup hitter Niko Mendez’s drive to deep left off reliever Tristan Moore to bring home Niko Savage, No. 9 in the order, and send Fullerton (19-7) to a second-round showdown at home with third-seeded Cerritos Gahr (22-6-1), a 6-2 winner over Newport Harbor.
“It boils down to they made less mistakes than we did ...,” said Fountain Valley coach Gerardo Gonzalez, who led the Barons to second place in the Surf League. “We made too many mistakes on the bases and didn’t execute when we needed to. We had a lot of mental errors, little things that cost us.
“That’s a talented team [we played]. We have some talent on our team, but we can’t get away with making those mistakes. We have to maximize all of our opportunities, and especially in this kind of environment.”
The Barons lost runners on a stolen-base attempt, against All-CIF catcher Nate Norman, and in a rundown on a pick-off throw, and failed to take advantage of two Fullerton errors that put runners in scoring position. As damaging, perhaps more so, was the umpire-interference call, on Norman’s throw to third, on a double-steal with one out in the first inning. The runners returned to first and second, and Tyler Peshke’s double-play grounder, which would have scored Johnny Long from third, ended the threat.
Fullerton, which last season reached the Southern Section Division 4 and Southern California Regional Division IV finals, triumphed from the heart of its lineup. The first four and the ninth batter in the order went a combined six for 12 — two of the hits by Savage — with all five runs and RBIs. Everyone else was zero for 11.
Norman’s two-run double to the wall in left-center provided the early lead, and fellow lefty Mendez stroked a rocket down the left-field line for a two-run double to make it 4-2.
Fountain Valley halved the initial deficit in the second. Dylan Krause was hit by a pitch, went to second on Moore’s single, stole third and scored on a Sean Sullivan fielder’s choice. It was 2-2 an inning later, Grack scoring from first, after walking, on the first of two RBI singles from Peshke.
Long led off the fifth with a walk, took second on a single by Tyler Arevalos, who had three hits, and third on a fielder’s choice. Fullerton starter George Papadatos’ wild pitch brought him home and sent Grack to second base, enabling the tying run on Peshke’s single to left.
Fullerton prevailed with Savage’s looping single, Zach Fany’s sacrifice bunt, an intentional walk to Connor Sunderland, and a full-count walk to Norman loading the bases for Mendez’s sacrifice fly.
“I’m proud of my guys for where they’ve been,” Gonzalez said. “I only had four returning guys that played varsity last year [for a 12-15 team that missed the playoffs] and 14 guys that came up from the JV ranks and learned to compete at the varsity level. We beat some really good teams this year, and the fact that they came through and got to where we were and have ourselves a situation to almost beat a league champ like this on their field, I’m proud of them.”
Grack echoed his coach’s sentiments.
“There wasn’t a lot expected of us, but we accomplished a lot. We almost swept Huntington [Beach], we took two big games from Corona del Mar. And a playoff berth — obviously, we’d have loved to win it — was a big accomplishment for us. We’re going to go home sad, but we’re proud of the year we had.”
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