Merced loses heartbreaker to Lincoln in Division I South baseball opener

As Lincoln High School senior Cody Valeros raced to first base, he watched as Merced shortstop Jeremy Mendoza tried to save the game for the Bears with a diving stop up the middle.

Valeros wasn’t sure if he had a hit or not.

“I knew there could be a chance he got it,” Valeros said. “When he dove, I couldn’t see the ball for a second. Then I saw it get behind him. That’s when I celebrated a bit.”

Valeros’ walk-off single capped a two-run bottom of the seventh inning that propelled the Trojans (22-6) into the second round of the Sac-Joaquin Section Division I South playoffs with a 6-5 win over the Bears (12-16) on Monday evening at Lincoln High.

The Trojans will face Modesto Metro Conference champion Beyer at 4 p.m. Wednesday in the second round at University of the Pacific’s Klein Family Field.

Merced’s season suddenly was over after a gut-wrenching loss.

“I thought up until the end that we were going to win,” said Bears senior Lawrence Anderson, who went 3 for 3 with a run and two stolen bases. “I know those last three outs are the hardest, but I expected us to get it.”

The game was a battle for both teams on a blustery day. No play was routine with gusts affecting every ball in the air.

“Anytime it’s windy, it makes you uncomfortable,” Merced coach Justin Parle said. “The ball does crazy things in the wind. Fly balls are weird. Pitching into the wind is tough. Wind games are always the toughest. They always have been, and they always will be.”

Whether it was the wind, adjusting to the mound or dealing with a tight strike zone, Merced ace Mitchell Miller struggled. The right-hander went into the game with a 0.54 ERA, without having allowed an earned run in more than 25 innings since March 26. Miller gave up four runs, five hits and six walks in three innings.

“He definitely didn’t have his best stuff, but his heart was there,” Parle said. “You could see it in his eyes. He wanted to win this one.”

Meanwhile, the Merced offense took advantage of Lincoln’s mistakes. In typical Bears fashion, they turned a hit batter, a sacrifice bunt and an error into a run to tie the score 1-1 in the second.

The Bears loaded the bases in the third, and two errors helped Merced take a 3-1 lead.

Merced, however, couldn’t get the big hit to create the big inning. Merced went 0 for 11 with runners in scoring position until Jacob Alarcon came up with a big two-run single in the fifth that gave the Bears a 5-4 lead.

“That’s a nod to their guy,” Parle said of Lincoln pitcher Keegan Wallen. “Whenever he got in trouble, he went to his offspeed pitches and we never got him.”

The Bears were three outs away from that 5-4 lead being enough. Tanner Pellissier relieved Miller with two on and nobody out in the fourth, limited the damage to one run, and then pitched a scoreless fifth and sixth.

Lincoln’s Carson Criner reached on an error to start the seventh and Trent North laced a triple to the right-center gap to tie the score 5-5.

“That was crazy,” North said. “I didn’t want to go home. It’s my senior year, and we haven’t won a playoff game since I’ve been here. I wanted to leave it all on the field. That triple was amazing.”

With North representing the winning run and no outs, Parle called on right-hander Billy Burkett, and the senior almost delivered a miracle.

Burkett got the first two hitters to ground out without allowing North to score. After an intentional walk to leadoff hitter Alex Ketchie, Valeros played the hero role.

“We turned Billy into a pitcher toward the end of last year,” Parle said. “For him to do what he did is amazing. For him to come from where he started to just be in the game in that spot says a lot about him. He did an amazing job to get those first two outs.”

This story was originally published May 11, 2015 at 10:02 PM with the headline "Merced loses heartbreaker to Lincoln in Division I South baseball opener."