Los Banos baseball’s season ends on walk-off homer

All a good team looks for is an opportunity – a crack in its opponent’s armor that might lead to a change in momentum, a chance to turn a game on its head when it matters most.

Los Banos High School’s baseball team presented no shortage of those opportunities to Bear River in the fifth inning Wednesday night. A double, two walks, two hit batters, a costly throwing error and two wild pitches contributed to an improbable two-out rally in which the Bruins scored seven runs to tie the score.

Jake Rogers completed the Bear River comeback with a walk-off home run in the bottom of the eighth inning, ending the Tigers’ season with an 8-7 loss in the first round of the Sac-Joaquin Section Division IV playoffs at Tony Zupo Field.

“That’s a tough loss right there,” Los Banos coach Pat Fuentes said. “It’s that time of year where you have to keep coming after teams. We had a great first three innings, but then we didn’t tack anything else on.

“Seven runs probably still should have been enough, but we allowed ourselves to die out a little bit. It shows that you can’t have a mental letup or good teams are going to burn you. Give them credit. They kept fighting, and we failed to make plays when we had a chance in that inning. The kids kept battling, but once we let them get the momentum, we never got it back.”

The Tigers (16-7) came out swinging. Los Banos scored five runs on six hits in the opening inning. Josh Gomes drove in two runs to make it 5-0.

Los Banos pushed across two more runs on three hits in the second to take a 7-0 lead. James Bostick (2-4, double, two runs) and Josh Gould (two RBIs) each singled in runs, and eight of the Tigers’ nine starters had at least one hit through two frames.

“We came out and played the way we’ve practiced all week, all season really,” Bostick said. “We were obviously excited, but we knew there was a lot of game left. We needed to do a better job keeping our foot on the gas.”

Bear River (18-9-1) turned to southpaw junk-baller Joe Rantz in the fourth. Against an arsenal of off-speed stuff, the Los Banos bats went dormant.

It didn’t seem to matter much until the fifth.

The Bruins used two singles and a hit batter to load the bases with two outs. Jacob Cross got Bear River on the board with a bases-clearing double into the right-center gap. Gould, who allowed three hits through four innings, hit another batter and was relieved by Kody Cardoza.

The freshman walked the first two batters he faced to push across a fourth run but should have been out of the inning after that, inducing a ground ball to short. The ball was thrown away, however, allowing two more runs to score and putting the tying run in scoring position. Jacob Van Patten scored the tying run on a wild pitch.

Cardoza got a strikeout to end the inning, but Los Banos never fully recovered. The Tigers got a runner in scoring position in the sixth and seventh innings but stranded both.

Rogers (2 for 4) ended it with a no-doubt home run to left to open the bottom of the eighth.

This story was originally published May 18, 2016 at 9:25 PM with the headline "Los Banos baseball’s season ends on walk-off homer."