Santa Barbara High baseball bounced back from an early deficit and earned a 12-5 win over Paramount in the second round of the CIF-SS D5 playoffs on Tuesday at Eddie Mathews Field.
The Dons fell behind by three runs in the early stages, but a consistent offensive attack paired with clutch pitching from Jack Paskin in the fifth and sixth innings allowed Santa Barbara to punch its ticket to the CIF-SS D5 Quarterfinals on Friday.
“They were so locked in. I just had a great feeling coming in,” Santa Barbara High head coach Steve Schuck said. “They trust each other. They’re having fun. They’re playing for each other.”
In the quarterfinals, the Dons will be on the road against Kaiser High in Fontana, with the first pitch set for 3:15 p.m. Santa Barbara High experienced a complete turnaround late in the season, finishing sixth in the Channel League before rattling off three straight wins to earn an at-large bid into the postseason.
“They’re completely bought in, it just took a little bit longer,” Schuck said of his team. “I knew if we could get on a run, and we won four out of our last five (in the regular season), I knew all we needed was a ticket to that dance. And we got our ticket. So now let’s go, we’re on borrowed time.
“Something happened about 3 weeks ago against SM. I don’t know what it is. The coaches are trying to figure it out. This team’s completely changed, and this is what we’ve been waiting for all year. It must have been a collective effort on their part where they just said, ‘Let’s just go play baseball.’ There aren’t many teams that we played that are better baseball teams than us.”
After Santa Barbara’s Emiliano Ramirez and Paramount’s Fabricio Aguilar cruised through the first inning, the Pirate offense mounted a big two-out rally in the second.
The first two batters flew out, but Paramount responded with a double, a single and a walk to load the bases.
Aguilar, the starter and No. 9 hitter, then came through with a bases-clearing double off the wall to take a 3-0 lead.
The Dons got one of those runs back in the bottom of the second on a Paramount error, but they stranded the bases loaded to keep the score at 3-1.
Ramirez responded with a pair of strikeouts in a 1-2-3 top of the third to keep the momentum with the home team.
The SB bats kept the momentum going as Max Weddle was hit by a pitch to lead off the bottom half and Milo Winckler doubled him home to cut the deficit to one.
Two batters later, Jack Paskin drove in Winckler on an RBI sacrifice fly to even the game at 3-3 heading into the fourth. The Dons got contributions from up and down the lineup Tuesday, as every batter who stepped to the plate reached base.
“It starts in practice,” Schuck said of the offensive success. “Yesterday was probably the best practice we had all year. It was like a firework show.”
The Pirates punched back in the top of the fourth, taking advantage of an SB error and scoring on an RBI single to take the lead back at 4-3. However, that lead didn’t last long.
Derek Jaye led off the bottom half with a single and scampered to third after the ball got away from the center fielder. Brandon Weaver then tied the game with an RBI sacrifice fly.
Jetner Welch followed with a walk and worked his way to third on a pair of stolen bases. Weddle then put the Dons in front with an RBI sacrifice fly of his own to take a 5-4 lead after four.
The Pirates threatened in the fifth with the bases loaded and one out, but Paskin took over on the bump and got two straight pop-outs to keep his team in the lead.
Paskin then made an impact with his bat in the bottom half, blasting a solo homer over the right-field wall to add an insurance run at 6-4.
“I have yet to see [Paskin]him fold in a pressure situation. It ain’t in him. It’s not in him at all,” Schuck said. “He’s got all the confidence in the world. We have all the confidence in the world in him… You go out to the mound and look at his eyes. They’re icy cold. It’s awesome.”
After Paskin cruised through the top of the sixth, the Dons’ offense blew the game wide open in the bottom half.
Cruz Lorca and Brandon Weaver each singled home a pair of runs, Tanner Wilson drew a bases-loaded walk and Griffin Arnold scored on a wild pitch to balloon the lead to 12-4.
The Pirates plated one run in the top of the seventh, but it was far too little, too late, as the Dons held on for the 12-5 victory.
Lorca and Weaver tallied two hits apiece to pace the Santa Barbara offense, with Lorca driving in two runs and scoring twice. Weaver drove in a trio of runs and scored once.