Strong Pitching Performances at Home by Martin and Michlitsch and a Hot Winkles Bat Help Beat Panthers 6-5.
After an afternoon on the breezy banks of the Carquinez Strait on Tuesday, in a contest that can be called nothing but Diamond Welfare, the Dons needed a bounce back win back at home on Thursday against the same Panthers from Benicia. The 11-6 loss at Benicia featured the gifting of five walks and six hit batsmen, with a crooked number 7 put up by the home team in the bottom of the fourth inning. An inning that was one to forget, featuring three hit-by-pitch, two walks, several singles, and a couple of sacrifice flies thrown on top. In the loss, the Dons outhit the Panthers 13 to 8, with multiple hits by Zach Birrell, Jimmy Cusumano, Nico Roig, Tyler Winkles, and designated hitter Josh Lee, who is enjoying a nice return this week.
The start of the game at home on Thursday didn’t sow the seeds of confidence in the fans who had come out to watch the JV squad rather than watching Roger Goodell and the Shield put on the NFL draft and watch Caleb Williams become the sixth USC Trojan picked number one in the draft. Cody Michlitsch got the start for the Dons and gave up four hits to go along with a Dons error in the top of the first before he decided it was better to disrupt the Panther’s timing with some off-speed offerings thrown into their steady diet of fastballs. Down 3-0, the Dons’ bats slumbered over the first two innings. Michlitsch only allowed one baserunner over the next two innings, an error in the second, and a rally was brewing in the bottom of the third when 2B Brady Wall reached on an error and Birrell worked a walk to bring leadoff hitter Winkles to the plate. First pitch swinging, he ripped a ball deep into right center field. The ball was hit deep enough for Wall to think of tagging, and as he hovered back to the bag at second, speedy CF Birrell was a couple of strides away from second when the ball got down in the grass. The stands were entertained by what happened in the next few seconds. Coach Jim Burleigh had a unique situation on his hands. He had to send Wall as he rounded third, as Birrell looked like he was ready to pass him the baton as he passed the third baseman. Any sign to hold Birrell might have been interpreted by Wall as his sign, and the coach knew his trail runner’s speed, so both got the green light…
Sports movie fans felt like they were watching something they had seen before. Wall scored as the catcher fielded the relay from right just a little too late to attempt a tag, but because he didn’t make that move, Birrell didn’t have the chance to be as elusive as Wesley Snipe’s character Willie Mays Hays in the movie Major League and was tagged out. A Michlitsch ground-out RBI scored Winkles before the side was retired, and a sizeable deficit was now just one.
Having a marathon first inning, Michlitsch was replaced by the fresh arm of Reid Martin, who had sneaky, if not filthy at times, stuff to keep the Panthers at bay. He worked his way around a couple more errors, and looked as cool as James Dean in spikes as he worked out of jams in the fifth, sixth, and seventh innings, including a nobody-out, men-on-second-and-third situation up one run in the top of the seventh. The Dons had made a nice comeback, and were very productive with men on third base, with RBI groundouts by Michlitsch and Lee scoring the comeback fourth and fifth runs for the Dons, and A.J. Hastings reaching on an error to score the go-ahead run in the sixth.
Martin’s sequence of a ground ball right to a drawn-in 2B Michlitsch, which froze the runner at third, was followed by a beauty of a duel in which he flipped curveball after curveball down and away at the Panther’s batter before whipping a dart and painting the lower outside corner, the umpire ringing up the batter, who stood still in the box, waiting for the curve that never came to fall out of the strike zone. His closing batter was retired by a short fly ball to CF. Though Michlitsch and Martin gave up 4 and 6 hits respectively, neither one gave up a base on balls.
The Dons match up against the Clayton Valley JV next Tuesday and Thursday.