Livingston loses to San Leandro in pitchers’ duel

Livingston High School baseball coach Matt Winton could stomach this loss.

Even if it meant watching his team almost get no-hit and strike out 17 times in a 1-0 loss to San Leandro on the second day of the 57th annual Fran Oneto/Atwater-Winton Lions Club Easter Baseball Tournament on Tuesday at Memorial Ballpark.

“Thousand times better than (Monday) night,” Winton said. “Their guy was tough. We’ve seen some good pitchers this year. We just finished playing El Capitan, and both their guys (Sai Davaluri and Tyler Skelton) are good, but we hadn’t seen this kind of velocity yet.”

The Wolves (7-4-1) battled against San Leandro’s pint-sized, hard-throwing Augusto Pineda, whose fastball regularly hit 88-89 mph on a radar gun held by a fan behind home plate in the first inning.

Livingston had opportunities to score early as Pineda struggled with his control, but the Wolves stranded two runners in the first and second innings.

Pineda overpowered Livingston’s lineup, tossing six scoreless innings without giving up a hit and striking out 14.

It was a game Winton would much rather see than the one he saw Monday night in which the Wolves made six errors in an 11-4 loss to Atwater.

The message to his team was simple entering Day Two of the tournament.

“We have to compete,” said Winton, whose team has lost four games in a row. “Today, we competed a little bit. (Monday) night, we didn’t. We came out flat. I don’t know why. That was a big game for us and both communities.”

What Winton liked was watching his ace, Blake Jantz, go toe-to-toe with Pineda. While Pineda was rearing back and throwing, Jantz used his craftiness to carve his way through the Pirates’ lineup, even breaking out a few knuckleballs in the second inning.

Jantz pitched around a leadoff walk in the first inning and was helped by Eddie Avila’s run-saving, diving catch in center field in the second inning.

The Livingston right-hander gave up four hits in seven innings.

“I just had to throw strikes,” Jantz said. “Hopefully, the defense will back me up, and they did. Their guy threw pretty hard, but I had to just stay with my game.”

The Pirates (10-1) finally broke the scoreless tie with a run in the sixth. Cal Poly commit Bradlee Beesley started the inning with a double to right-center field and advanced to third on an errant pickoff attempt by Jantz. Kyle Guerra then hit a fly ball to center to score Beesley.

“We call that a Pirate run,” San Leandro coach Mike Bungarz said. “When we score a run without getting a hit or only one hit, that’s a Pirate run. You could hear the kids in the dugout say, “That’s a Pirate run, coach.’ ”

Against Pineda’s wishes and with the no-hit bid still intact, Bungarz pulled his ace after six innings and 88 pitches.

“He wanted to finish, but I’m not going to be the guy responsible for something happening,” Bungarz said.

Livingston’s Michael Gutierrez ended the no-hit bid with a single to center with one out in the seventh against Beesley, but the senior struck out the side to pick up the save and give the Pirates their second win in the tournament.

San Leandro will play Atwater at 7 p.m. Wednesday with a spot in the tournament championship on the line.

This story was originally published March 29, 2016 at 4:58 PM with the headline "Livingston loses to San Leandro in pitchers’ duel."