Ocean View baseball routed by Yorba Linda in CIF opener
Ocean View couldn’t have found a worse time to play its worst baseball of the year, so head coach Tanner VanMaanen was emphasizing bigger-picture stuff following the Seahawks’ quick and brutal elimination Thursday from the CIF Southern Section playoffs.
Defensive troubles cost the home side early, and then Yorba Linda pushed across 10 runs in the fifth inning en route to a 17-2 Division 2 rout that offered few pluses, perhaps just one: All the seniors got to play.
Ninth-ranked Ocean View (20-8) committed six errors in the first-round encounter, plus some mental miscues here and there, and could not calm the Mustangs’ bats, which produced 17 hits — nine of them in the top of the fifth, when 15 batters stepped to the plate — and applied heavy pressure on five pitchers and the group behind them.
“Hands down, it was our worst game of the year,” said VanMaanen, whose Golden West League title-winning side started its campaign with two losses to Yorba Linda. “When we make as many errors as we do, we’re not going to get over it, no matter [what we do]. We came out and the moment was really big for us, and we had a lot of young guys that have never, ever been in this situation.
“What we talked about here at the end was, like, in life we have these big moments with all the pressure on us, and you have to execute, and sometimes we don’t. Today we didn’t, and I hope that’s the life lesson we take out of this whole thing.”
The Mustangs (14-13), the North Hills League co-champion and a Division 3 semifinalist last year, will be home against No. 8 Arcadia (20-7), a 3-0 winner over Long Beach Poly, in Tuesday’s second round.
“This is the best offensive display we’ve put on all year,” said Yorba Linda head coach Mike Case, whose team hit double digits three times during the regular season, including a 10-4 victory on the same field in the second game of the campaign. “We had a plan, and these guys stuck to the plan, and it worked. Ocean View’s a good team, and Tanner does a great job with that team, and we had to be ready to play. These guys came out and did.”
The Seahawks were down, 4-0, after three and a half innings, three of the four errors to that point (and a passed ball on a foul tip that was wrongly reversed) leading to the runs, all unearned. They’d barely touched Mustangs right-hander Alec Waddell, who breezed through 1-2-3 innings in the first and second and induced a double-play grounder after Sam Arredondo led off the third with a single.
The foul-tip reversal — the sound of the ball glancing off Vaughn Sharp’s bat was heard clearly — amplified an error on Nate Broughton’s ground ball to start the second, enabling Will Devlahovich to squeeze home the second run following Sharp’s RBI single. Yorba Linda added two more runs in the fourth with the help of two errors and run-scoring singles from Jackson El-Farra, who went 4 for 4 and scored four runs, and Owen Smith.
Another plate-call reversal cost Ocean View in the bottom of the fourth. Frankie Armenta was hit by a Waddell pitch to start things, Carson Sulsona followed with a single to left, and Gavin Croghan reached on an error to load the bases. Waddell then plunked Peyton Perry to bring home the Seahawks’ first run, but the call was canceled after Case complained and the umpires huddled for a minute or so.
Perry then popped out, starting pitcher J.T. Lewis’ single scored Armenta, and another double play ended the bases-loaded opportunity. By the time Ocean View came to bat again, the game was, for all intents, done.
“We played a horrible game, by any stretch of the seam,” VanMaanen said. “It was probably our worst game by a million miles, right? And kudos to them. They came out, they were prepared, they were ready to hit right away and put balls in play, made us try — I use the word ‘try’ — to make plays, but that’s baseball. And it’s one of the greatest things: It teaches you life lessons, and it’s very humbling at times. And that’s all we take away from it.”
Perry, a senior who started in right field and pitched the final two innings, said it was obviously a tough way to end the season.
“I think the moment just got a little too big for us, and that’s what cost us in the end, and then it was just a snowball effect,” he said.
Case, the Yorba Linda coach, was empathetic.
“I’ve been on that end, too,” he said. “I totally feel [for them]. Tanner’s a great, great coach, and I do feel bad. I feel for him, definitely.”
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