Medical Lake packed the pitching arm, but seemed to forget the bats when they played their opening game of the 1A baseball Bi-Disrict playoffs last Tuesday in Moses Lake.
Limited to just four hits by the Brewster Bears’ starting pitcher, Timbo Taylor, the Cardinals fell 3-0 at Larson Field ending their season at 12-9.
Brewster, the third-place team in the Caribou Trail League, improved to 19-4 after beating Northeast A League regular-season champ Freeman 7-3 Saturday. The Bears will enter the state playoffs following a 15-13 slugfest to Cashmere in the Bi-District championship game.
Freeman (18-3) went 0-2 in the tournament, but still earned the fourth berth to state.
“It was a great game (against Brewster), probably the best team we’ve seen all year,” Medical Lake head coach Kerry Kelly said. “Brewster had a great team and I’ll tell you what, we battled.”
The Cardinals appeared to get off to a quick start off of Taylor in the top of the first when Cory Wagner doubled and Dylan Rushfelt singled. But they were left stranded and it set the tone.
Throwing mistakes opened the door for the Bears to go up 2-0. “(They were) not necessarily errors; we made some throws when we shouldn’t have that allowed them to score some runs,” Kelly said.
Medical Lake’s starting pitcher Roman Kissack gave up just six hits, going the distance, striking out seven. “He really should have been rewarded,” Kelly said of the senior who likely played the last baseball of his career.
It was just a well-played, well pitched game on both sides, Kelly said. “We just couldn’t get the runs across.”
Kelly said the game capped a nice little stretch that got his team into the postseason for a second straight season, because despite losing two straight to end the year at 12-9 overall, “they played some good ball that day, and in the Riverside games,” he said.
Kelly hopes that carries over into summer American Legion baseball which begins Saturday, May 31.
Seven Medical Lake players will join the summer program and be augmented by individuals from a variety of outlying communities. They include Brent Rosman from Wilbur, Tommy Wilkie from Davenport and Jack Walker from Reardan,” Kelly said.
“It’s been a great relationship getting these kids from these small schools that don’t have summer programs,” Kelly said.
The roster is very young and composed of sophomores and juniors to be.
“They’ve all played together and I just really think we’re going to have a great summer season that will pay dividends for us next year,” Kelly said.
Paul Delaney can be reached at pdelaney@cheneyfreepress.com.
Reader Comments(0)