3 rallies not enough for Pullman
In the end, Pullman fell just one rally short.
Facing elimination in the 2A Region IV baseball playoffs, the defending state champions rallied in the seventh, eighth and ninth innings before falling to Naches Valley 9-7 in a 10-inning marathon Sunday at University High School.
Ultimately, the 20th win of the season was a Pyrrhic victory for the Rangers, who fell to arch-rival East Valley-Yakima 4-3 in the state quarterfinal game. East Valley knocked off Omak 6-2 in Sunday’s opening game.
“It’s always tough to go home and call it a season, but I don’t think I could have asked for a better game than this,” Pullman coach Lance Lincoln said. “The kids played their hearts out and gave us everything they had. They can walk away with their heads held high.”
The Greyhounds put off making that walk for quite a while.
Naches Valley scored two runs in the top half of the first inning off Pullman’s left-handed starter, Justin Cooper, and did not surrender that lead until the bottom of the seventh.
Rangers junior Zach Swart kept Pullman on the ropes for 7 2/3 innings. The left-hander, boasting a 7-0 record and a 1.24 earned run average coming into the game, mixed an array of breaking balls and off-speed pitches to confound the Greyhounds while the Naches Valley offense answered Pullman rallies
Pullman, which never led, tied the game in the bottom of the seventh in the most unlikely way possible.
Senior right fielder Justin Erwin, scheduled to enter Sacred Heart Hospital today to undergo a battery of chemotherapy treatments for a form of bone cancer called Ewing’s sarcoma, led off the inning by reaching on an error by shortstop Ben Rowan. Swart came back to strike out Chris Snyder, but hit freshman second baseman Cody Weber.
After coaxing Justin Cooper to fly out to center, sending Erwin to third with two outs, Naches Valley coach Ben Walker went to his bullpen for his No. 2 starting pitcher, freshman Lucas Forgey, a hard-throwing right-hander, to face Ryan Druffel.
“Yeah,” Walker said when asked if Swart was tiring. “But mostly we just thought we had a really good matchup bringing our No. 2 pitcher in against the right-hander.”
The freshman did his job perfectly, striking out Druffel on three pitches.
But the third strike, a high fastball on the inside corner of the plate, was missed both by Druffel’s bat and Rangers catcher Drew Belton’s glove. While the big infielder raced to first on the passed ball, Erwin raced home with the tying run, forcing extra innings.
“Give (Naches Valley) a lot of credit,” Lincoln said. “We thought that, once we tied it up that we’d have the momentum. They just kept battling back. That’s a good ballclub.”
The Rangers scored a single run in the top of the eighth. The Greyhounds came back to tie.
The Rangers scored twice in the top of the ninth on a two-run double by senior first baseman Tyler Burns. Pullman answered with two runs of its own after Forgey loaded the bases with no outs on a balk, a walk and an infield single that traveled all of about 15 feet.
But the Greyhounds had no answers in the 10th when Naches Valley again scored twice – this time on a bloop single by Matt Weigel.
Forgey allowed a base hit to open the bottom of the 10th, but a strikeout, ground out and fly out ended the game and Pullman’s season.
“I’m very proud of my guys and the way they battled back,” Lincoln said. “They answered every call. You couldn’t ask for more out of a group of guys and the character we have on this club.