Gilroy
– Not even Gilroy head baseball coach Clint Wheeler could deny
that the Mustangs’ 5-4 win over Salinas Tuesday at home was largely
based on luck.
Gilroy – Not even Gilroy head baseball coach Clint Wheeler could deny that the Mustangs’ 5-4 win over Salinas Tuesday at home was largely based on luck.
“You don’t even know,” he said, shaking his head after the game.
Though it wasn’t pretty, it was another TCAL win for the ‘Stangs, who now sit at 6-2 in the league.
After Gilroy’s second baseman Matt Galindo, shortstop Drew Andersen and first baseman Peter Mickartz collaborated on a double play to end the top of the seventh inning, the Mustangs found themselves down 4-1, needing to score four runs to come away with a victory against the TCAL’s last–place team.
Fortunately for the ‘Stangs, the Cowboys (9–14/1-8) were willing to help them out. Gilroy took advantage of some wild Salinas pitching down the stretch to change the game.
Andersen led off the bottom of the seventh with a single between shortstop and third. Then Salinas pitcher Skyler Crawford committed a balk, moving Andersen to scoring position, and walked Mickartz and Chris Hernandez to load the bases. Michael Stevens coaxed another walk out of Crawford, which scored Andersen and closed the gap to 4-2.
Salinas’ Andy Castro took over for Crawford on the mound, but didn’t provide much more control.
With no outs and the bases still loaded, Marty Sustaita dropped an
RBI single in short center field and Salinas’ Castro walked GHS pitcher Jeremy Teschera to tie the game 4-4.
Stevens took advantage of a wild pitch from Castro and came home for the game-winner on a past ball.
“I wasn’t happy at all today,” Wheeler said of his squad, which until the seventh inning of the game had not scored a run in thirteen consecutive innings. “Early in the season, I don’t mind losing games because you learn from them. But I don’t think we learned anything from this game.”
Salinas had jumped out to 3-0 lead by the second inning, thanks to an unearned run by first baseman Mike Blueford in the first inning and a two–run single from right fielder Dan Della–Rose.
In the sixth inning, the Cowboys’ Chris Healey stretched the Salinas lead to 4-0 – and christened the Mustangs’ new scoreboard – with a solo home run off Jeremy Teschera, which went over the fence and banged off the brand-new board.
Gilroy scored its first run of the game in the sixth inning, when Galindo drove in Sustaita (single) with a hard chopper that deflected off the glove of Salinas pitcher Peter Estes.
“We need to come out fired up,” said Teschera, who came in for Noel DeLatorre in the top of the fifth inning. “We were lazy the first six innings. We need to like we did in the seventh every inning.”
Stevens, at third base, made a big play to get the Mustangs out of the sixth inning. With the bases packed with Salinas players, Stevens snagged a hard-hit line drive hit to his right for the third out.
Teschera got the Mustangs out of a similar jam in the top of the fifth. The Cowboys had loaded the bases once again and Teschera struck out Joe Hernandez to get the Mustangs out of the inning unscathed.
“I couldn’t find my zone,” said Teschera, who settled down after a rocky sixth inning. “So I stopped thinking and just started playing. I thought, I need to help out the team and that ‘K’ was a huge momentum lifter and got our confidence way up.”
The ‘Stangs take on Monterey Thursday and play their second game against Salinas on Friday.
Gilroy 5, Salinas 4
R H E
SAL 120 001 0 4 7 2
GIL 000 001 4 5 5 2
WP – DeLatorre
LP – Martinez
