Flintridge Prep baseball beats Providence to win fifth straight
GLENDALE — Flintridge Prep baseball team welcomed fellow CIF-Southern Section Division VI member Providence to the Glendale Sports Complex for a final nonleague matchup Friday afternoon.
The older, more experienced Rebels played strong baseball at the plate and in the field to hold off the younger, greener Pioneers and come away with a convincing 10-1 victory.
“I had five starting freshman,” third-year Providence Coach Steve Knez said, “so, I’d say, playing against a squad like that we’re moving in the right direction.”
Flintridge Prep (6-2) steadily stoked its lead, putting up at least one run in each of the first four innings, and has now won five games in a row. However, the two runs it scored in the first would prove to enough for pitcher Clayton Weirick (2-0).
“The game went really well,” first-year Flintridge Prep Coach Guillermo Gonzalez said. “Our pitcher was throwing strikes and hitting his spots. We got in trouble a couple innings, but he bared down and got out of it real good.”
The senior went the distance, throwing 84 pitches, giving up the one run and striking out seven, including two in the final frame. He also stroked a run-scoring single in the third inning.
“The trend in my pitching is I start a little bit slower,” Weirick said. “I always end up working my way into it, so by the end of the games I feel like I have better control than when I started sometimes.”
In contrast to the senior the Rebels sent to the mound, Providence (1-3) countered with freshman Sean Holt. Holt threw 101 pitches over his five innings of work in which the Rebels plated eight runs, aided by several defensive miscues by the Pioneers.
“Our first game of the year [Cano] threw 95 pitches,” Knez said, “so right out of the chute he’s already our workhouse.”
The Rebels had four players with two RBI in a balanced offensive attack. Freshman Cole Pilar got it started with a run-producing triple to the left-center field gap in the first inning and added a RBI groundout in the third.
Senior Karlsen Termini had a sacrifice fly in both the first and fourth innings to drive in his two. Junior Cole Rademacker, who had three hits, got both of his RBI by way of a single down the right-field line as part of a three-run fourth inning.
Senior catcher Dylan Arya brought home the final two runs of the game in the bottom of the sixth with a single up the middle with two outs.
“Hitting wise, we were there,” Gonzalez said. “We were sitting back better than the last game. We let the ball travel and we were making contact.”
The Pioneers scored their lone run in the fifth inning. Freshman Dante Cano hammered a two-out single down the right-field line to score Ben Jury — who had led off the frame by reaching on an error — from third.
Both teams’ next game will mark the start of league play. Providence returns to play in the Liberty League, as last season it played as an independent.
“Last year we stepped out of league, we were an independent team last year because we had such a bad season the year before,” Knez said. “This year we are going back into the league, so [the league opener against Yeshiva] is our first real test of just how far we’ve come in a year and a half.”
Flintridge Prep jumps right into the teeth of Prep League with games against Pasadena Poly and Webb, which are ranked No. 5 and No. 6 respectively in Division VI.
“We’ve got two big games next week,” Weirick said. “We’ve got Poly and Webb. So if we focus, play our game, pitch well, and play some defense I think we’ll be fine.”