Dos Pueblos stayed in the hunt for a CIF playoff berth by beating up on Oxnard High, 13-1, in a Channel League game at Scott O’Leary Field on Friday.
The win puts the Chargers in a tie for fourth-place with Rio Mesa at 6-6. The top four finishers receive automatic playoff berths. DP closes the league season with two games against Ventura while Rio Mesa plays Oxnard.
From the beginning of Friday’s game, the Chargers intention was to put the ball in play and work on their small-ball approach.
“We’ve been trying to generate some offense. It’s an area where we haven’t been as consistent as I think we can be,” said Dos Pueblos coach George Hedricks. “And we worked really hard on Wednesday, after Tuesday’s game, and worked on executing, seeing the ball in the zone.”
The Chargers’ work paid off in the first. Zach Gesswein led off with a single and stole second base. From there, the inning took off with a combination of singles and walks, leading to a pair of sacrifice flies to put them up 2-0.
“They have to field it, catch it, and throw it. If you can get the bunt down and get the guys on the bases moving, it causes some chaos, and opportunity. I thought we did a really good job at that early in the game and it set us up later to be able to swing the bat,” said Hedricks.
The third inning was just what the coach talked about as Oxnard wasn’t able to control the damage on the base paths. Three singles in the inning, one via bunt and a sacrifice bunt led to two errors in the inning and thre more runs to make it 6-0.
“They played really well, so nothing against them. That’s the beauty about baseball, you just never know,” said Oxnard head coach Alfred Tarazon. “Yeah, they played a lot of small ball. But should we be prepared? Yes. And we work on those things in practice. But when you play in the game, it’s a different scenario.”
The Yellowjackets (3-9, 11-11) played some small ball of their own in the top of the fourth behind Jacob Stringer’s leadoff single and stolen base. They scored a run off of an error and a well-executed bunt.
DP Pitcher Joe Talarico managed to roll a bang-bang double play to end the inning just allowing one unearned run.
“Joe has been our starting shortstop. That’s his primary position. He was kind of our closer and late-inning guy early in the season. Based on some injuries he’s been starting games for us for about three or so weeks now,” said Hedricks.
“I think his quick tempo keeps his defense loose and they make good plays behind him. Joe’s done a really fantastic job at transitioning to starting pitcher and giving us a chance to win a big game when needed to win.”
The Chargers (13-11 overall) continued to pile it. Alexander Hajda hammered a two-run home run to deep left field.
“Our goal is to stay above 500, so we have the opportunity to enter as a wild-card for playoffs,” said Tarazon. “Right now we’re in Division 5 playing conference opponents in Division 3 and Division 2.
Dos Pueblos’ Hedricks offered similar words of encouragement to his team battling for a playoff spot themselves.
“We can’t sit on today. You can’t assume days like today are going to happen. You can’t just show up and put up 13 runs, you got to grind it out. So always moving forward, don’t take steps backwards, build off of today.”
