Volunteers lose pitching duel in American Legion tournament

The Merced Volunteers bats couldn’t solve Chico Nuts pitcher Hayden Southam when they had the opportunities.

Southam pitched eight scoreless innings and the Nuts scored an unearned run in the top of the eighth inning to defeat the Volunteers 1-0 on Friday evening in the second day of the American Legion State Tournament at Borman Field.

“I’m disappointed but I’m very proud of my team,” said Merced coach Rollo Adams, whose team had an eight-game winning streak snapped.

The loss spoiled a brilliant pitching effort from ace Mitchell Miller, who pitched seven scoreless innings and left with the game scoreless after throwing 110 pitches.

Both Miller and Southam were on their game, making big pitches when they needed to in keeping two explosive offenses silent throughout the game.

“I had watched (Chico) play on Thursday in their first game and saw they could hit the ball,” Miller said. “I knew I had to battle. During the pregame talk Rollo told me I was going to have to pitch to contact more, so I was trying to do that.”

Miller struck out four and surrendered just three hits and four walks, and Chico stranded eight runners on base against him.

Meanwhile, the Volunteers (26-21) had their opportunities against Southam. Merced went 1 for 11 with runners in scoring position and the one hit was a check-swing dribbler from Efrain Del Rio in the third inning, which came after Josh May and Lawrence Anderson were hit by pitches with two outs.

Del Rio beat the throw from Southam at first and May broke for the plate to try to score, but he was thrown out by Chico first baseman Marcus Whilhite.

“(Southam) fed his defense,” Anderson said. “We hit the balls where they were. If we could have found some holes, it would have changed the whole game. He had a good fastball and slider. He had a little two-seamer that worked against some of our guys. When he got in trouble, the fastball and slider were his go-to pitches.”

May started the game with a double and moved to third with one out, but Southam struck out Del Rio and got Carlo Del Real to ground out to third to end the threat.

Anderson and Del Rio led off the sixth with back-to-back singles, but Southam retired the next three hitters in order.

In the seventh, Craig Bettis singled to start the inning and was bunted to second by Darin Dupont. Southam got Kobe Nguyen to ground out to third for the second out. After intentionally walking May, Anderson grounded out to second.

“It’s something we struggled with all summer, getting those runners in,” Adams said. “We’ll strike out and then get that fly ball that would have been the sacrifice fly. We just couldn’t find a way. It didn’t happen. You have to give the Chico kid credit. He made the pitches when he needed to make them.”

Del Rio came on in relief of Miller in the eighth inning. After retiring the first two batters, Wilhite hit a sharp one-hopper that handcuffed Nguyen at shortstop. Nguyen picked up the ball, but his throw was wild to Miller at first, allowing Wilhite to reach second.

Quinn Spring, who had three of Chico’s four hits, then came through with a single to right to score Wilhite for the only run of the game. Adams said he had considered intentionally walking Spring in that spot.

Samson Abernathy relieved Southam in the ninth and opened the inning by drilling Tanner Pellissier with a fastball in the helmet. Pellissier stayed in the game, but didn’t advance past first as Abernathy retired the next three hitters to save the game.

Merced will play today at 3 p.m. against the winner of the San Mateo-Huntington Beach morning game in an elimination game. If the Volunteers win, they’ll need two wins on Sunday to win the state championship.

“At the end of the day, (Chico) made one more play than we did,” Adams said. “I feel if we can put the ball in play consistently, we’ll be fine and we can get to Sunday.”

This story was originally published July 31, 2015 at 8:51 PM with the headline "Volunteers lose pitching duel in American Legion tournament."