Sailors rally on the road
FOUNTAIN VALLEY — Twenty-five days had passed since the Newport Harbor High baseball team last led in a Sunset League game. The stretch included three games, 21 innings.
After a scoreless first inning at Fountain Valley on Wednesday, the Sailors’ streak of never having the lead went up to 22 innings. Max Crabbe was well aware of his team’s inability to take a lead in league, and he did something about it twice.
The first time was in the top of the second inning, when he singled in two runs to put Newport Harbor up for the first time since March 19. The Sailors gave back the lead in the bottom half of the second. Two innings later, Crabbe broke a tie with a single to right during a five-run fourth.
This time Newport Harbor stayed ahead for good, picking up an 8-3 win. The victory marked the Sailors’ second in league, matching last season’s league win total.
They prevailed behind a complete game by left-hander Jeremiah Sheldon and the bottom half of the lineup coming through with clutch hits.
Crabbe was one of those hitters. The sophomore batted eighth and he went two for three with three runs batted in, and the catcher helped out his battery mate.
“It started out with the Max Crabbe kid coming up with a big single to throw two up in the [second] inning,” Newport Harbor Coach Evan Chalmers said. “That was really important because we like that early-inning mojo.”
Finally getting the lead gave the Sailors a boost, and they moved into a tie with the Barons at 2-4, both are a game back of Los Alamitos and Edison, which share third place.
The early support also allowed Sheldon (4-3) to settle down after a 19-pitch first inning. He struck out three, walked four and allowed six hits and one earned run.
The tables turned in the second inning. Fountain Valley’s Roger Gonzales threw more than he wanted to, giving up a one-out double in left-center field to Josh Spicer and walking Cade Seabold on five pitches.
On Gonzales’ 18th pitch in the second inning, Crabbe singled over shortstop Justin Yang’s head to give Newport Harbor a 2-0 lead. The Sailors’ first advantage since they beat Marina, 7-3, at Angel Stadium last month was short lived.
The first three batters singled off Sheldon in the third inning. The last two, Yang and Wyatt McGinnis, got on with bunts, resulting in the Barons cutting the deficit in half.
The Sailors made a couple of mistakes on the bunts. Luke Genova fielded the first bunt near the first-base line, but second baseman John Olmstead didn’t get to the first-base bag in time to catch Genova’s flip to get Yang. Two pitches later, McGinnis laid down a nice bunt toward the third-base line, and Sheldon quickly fielded the ball and fired an errant throw to first base, giving the Barons runners on the corners.
After a sacrifice bunt put both runners in scoring position, Trent Sievers had an RBI groundout to even things up. Then the hosts jumped ahead, 3-2, after a throwing error to first.
“We kind of became unraveled with some of the small ball,” Chalmers said. “But the fact that we fought back immediately and bounced back [was great].”
Sean Korkmaz started the rally for Newport Harbor in the fourth. He ripped the first pitch he saw from Gonzales down the third-base line for a long single. Gonzales exited right after, and then the Sailors roughed up McGinnis.
Spicer, who went three for three, pulled the ball down the third-base line for a double, his second on the day, scoring Korkmaz to tie it at 3-3. Two batters later, Crabbe brought Spicer home with a single to right field, and an error resulted in Crabbe getting to third.
Cameron Mahaffy singled in a run, and after McGinnis threw eight straight balls to walk Olmstead and Sheldon, the Barons brought in Yang, their second reliever in the fourth. With the bases loaded, left-handed hitting Jake Genova delivered. The senior went the other way, driving in two runs with a single to make it 7-3 Newport Harbor.
“It’s been a long time since we rolled a five in one inning,” said Chalmers, whose team added a run in the fifth on Luke Genova’s home run to left field.
The Sailors play host to the Barons on Friday at 3:15 p.m. A win here and Newport Harbor, which has placed last in league four times in the past five years, can win its first league series in two years.
“[The win] puts us back in the hunt,” said Sheldon, referring to the top three spots in league that earn automatic berths into the CIF Southern Section Division 1 playoffs. “All the teams are really evenly matched. We’ve been right there in every single game. We just need to get over the hump.”
Sunset League
Newport Harbor 8, Fountain Valley 3
SCORE BY INNINGS
Newport 020 510 0 – 8 9 3
Fountain 030 000 0 – 3 6 1
Sheldon and Crabbe; Gonzales, McGinnis (4), Yang (4), Campbell (7) and Mazzone. W – Sheldon. L – McGinnis. 2B – Spicer (NH) 2. HR – L. Genova (NH).
