Buhach Colony duo combine on one-hitter in opening-round playoff win over Mountain House
Pitching and defense was the winning recipe for the Buhach Colony High baseball team as the No. 6 seed Thunder opened the Sac-Joaquin Section Division III playoffs with a 3-1 victory over No. 13 Mountain House on Tuesday afternoon at Buhach Colony High School.
Right-handers Logan Baptista and Spencer Lanz combined on a one-hitter and struck out 11 Mustangs to pave the way for the Thunder to advance to the second round on Thursday.
Buhach Colony (22-7) will travel to Folsom on Thursday to face No. 3 Vista Del Lago (23-6) on Thursday. The Eagles defeated Ceres 7-1 on Tuesday.
“It feels pretty good,” Baptista said. “It’s my senior year. We didn’t get to go the playoffs the last three years. We’ve got a good team behind me. I think we can go pretty far.”
Baptista pitched around four walks and a hit batter to get through five scoreless innings. He helped his cause with 10 strikeouts.
“I didn’t have my best stuff,” he said. “Just letting them get themselves out really worked best for me.”
Baptista’s battle with the strike zone led to a heavy pitch count early, but he found a way to keep the Mustangs off the board.
“I tell our guys if we can pitch and play defense we’ll give ourselves a shot to win ballgames,” said Buhach Colony coach Joe Medeiros. “That’s what we did today. We can win playoff games if we can do that.”
Mountain House right-hander Roy Gardner kept his team in the ballgame by limiting the Thunder to just one run through the first four innings.
Two errors helped the Thunder score a run in the bottom of the first inning. Gardner held BC to just one run by stranding two runners on in the first. Buhach Colony left two runners on base again in the second and fourth innings.
“The deeper we get in the playoffs we have to find a way to score when we get those opportunities,” Medeiros said. “We have to find a way to get that hit or execute. We can’t let teams hang around.”
Buhach Colony finally added some much needed insurance runs in the fifth inning when Baptista crushed a double to center field to score Kadyn Fillebrown.
“That was a huge double,” Baptista said. “I knew the first pitch was going to be a fastball because I watched him pitch to the batter ahead of me. If it wasn’t a fastball I’d swing through it. I didn’t try to do too much.”
Baptista then scored on a fly out by Spencer Lanz one out later to give the Thunder a 3-0 lead.
Mountain House didn’t pick up its first hit in the game until Tyler Hingco singled in a run with two outs in the seventh inning to cut the lead to 3-1.
Lanz was able to get strike out the final batter with the tying run on first base to close out the victory.
Pitman 11, Atwater 0 — The Falcons season came to an end with a loss to the No. 4 seed in the Division II loss. It was a banner year for the Falcons (19-8), who earned a share of their first CCC championship since 1987.
Lincoln 11, El Capitan 6 — The co-Central California Conference champions saw their season come to an end in the first round of the Sac-Joaquin Section Division III playoffs. The Zebras scored five runs in the top of the ninth inning to win in extra innings.
East Union 12, Livingston 2 — The Lancers broke the game open with a seven-run third inning as the Wolves season ended in the first round of the Sac-Joaquin Section Division IV playoffs.
Owen Winton and Alex Casillas both had hits and scored runs for Livingston (13-13).
This story was originally published May 10, 2022 at 8:32 PM.
