North pitchers stymie South offense in Merced County All-Star baseball game

Andrew Mitchel wasn’t feeling great.

After about a month off following the end of the high school baseball season, the southpaw tossed a couple innings for his American Legion team early last week. Mitchel said the recovery period was longer than he expected, and he was still feeling some soreness heading into Saturday night’s sixth annual Merced County All-Star Game.

Mitchel was determined not to let that ruin his one and only appearance in the game. The Buhach Colony graduate tossed four shutout innings for the North. Mitchel allowed one hit and struck out seven, setting the tone for an evening of dominant pitching in an 8-4 North victory at Blue Devil Field.

The victory gave the North a 4-2 series lead.

“I definitely was not feeling my best. I felt like I didn’t have the stuff to go out and do it myself, so my goal was just to hit the strike zone and let my defense help me out,” Mitchel said. “I felt a little wild, but I didn’t want that to be an excuse. This was my one and only chance in this game, and I wanted to go as long as I could.”

The rest of the North pitching staff followed suit, as the South managed just two hits, including a bunt single by Noah Fluharty of Mariposa, in nine innings. The quartet of Mitchel, Los Banos’ Josh Gould, Buhach Colony’s Mike Casso and Atwater’s Derek Molina combined for 14 strikeouts.

“Mitchel really set the tone,” North coach Jared Pimentel of Atwater said. “He threw some nasty pitches when he had to, including a 3-2 deuce that absolutely froze a guy.

“They had a little bit of an inning where some errors got them going, but for the most part our guys really shut them down.”

There was no shortage of heroes from the city of Atwater, as Falcons second baseman Chewy Duran broke a 4-4 deadlock in the bottom of the seventh inning with a bases-clearing triple.

The North used a walk, an Omar Sanchez single and an error to load the bases with one out. Duran, also of Atwater, jumped on the first elevated pitch he saw, drilling an opposite-field line drive over the right fielder. Duran scored on a wild pitch to make it 8-4.

“I was just looking for something up that I could drive,” Duran said. “I felt like I hit it pretty good, but I didn’t know if he had a play on it or not until it went over him. It’s probably one of the biggest hits of my career.”

The Western Athletic Conference did all the damage for the North early. South pitcher Mitchell Miller of Merced had the second inning extended when a popup by Casso hit the dirt untouched. Casso stole second and moved to third on a wild pitch. To add injury to insult, Livingston’s Cole Brown opened the scoring by drilling a line drive off Miller’s hip to plate Casso.

Gould doubled the lead in the fourth when he knocked in Gustine’s Robert Mello with a double. Gould scored on a wild pitch to make it 3-0, and Spencer Alamo of Gustine followed with another run on a wild pitch in the fifth.

The South got back into the game with a four-run sixth, despite not getting a ball out of the infield.

Gould issued walks to Sonora’s Tyler Casteel and Merced’s Lawrence Anderson and then beaned Efrain Del Rio of Dos Palos to load the bases with one out. Merced’s Armando Flores then drove a hard grounder back up the middle that caught Gould. The Los Banos junior recovered and had the runner at the plate but threw the ball away to score two runs.

A hit batter loaded the bases again, and a throwing error on a grounder hit by Sammy Mora of El Capitan brought in two more runs to tie the score.

“I felt like we finally had some momentum going after that inning,” South coach Kevin Jones of Dos Palos said. “We still weren’t hitting a lot of balls hard, but we found a way to get it tied up. But that’s baseball. Good pitchers are going to shut down your bats some days, and their guys threw well.”

This story was originally published June 13, 2015 at 11:07 PM with the headline "North pitchers stymie South offense in Merced County All-Star baseball game."