Isacc Cervantes’ 3-run jack completed quite a comeback on Friday afternoon.
The Carpinteria senior blasted one over the fence in right-center in the bottom of the seventh to lift the Warriors to a thrilling 9-8 victory over visiting archrival Bishop Diego.
Carpinteria trailed the game 8-1 after three innings.
“I was 0-for-3 so I just wanted to make some contact and make something happen,” said the soft-spoken Cervantes, still breathing heavily after being mauled by his teammates.
Pitcher Kyle Geary shook off a nightmarish start to the game to pick up the win. He gave up a 3-run dinger to Bishop’s Dylan Jamison in the first and a grand slam to Paul Gherini with no outs in the second. Another run off of a wild pitch in the third had the senior looking ready for an early exit, but he re-grouped and retired the final 13 batters he faced.
“I try to be relaxed before starts, but I think I came in a little too relaxed today,” said Geary, who notched eight strikeouts. “I left those two pitches up on the bomb to Jamison and the bomb to Gherini, but I guess after that I got a little ticked off and finally picked it up.”
Except for a 5-run Carpinteria fourth, Cody Yokubaitis was lights-out on the mound for the Cardinals. The Bishop hurler gave up a double to Nathan Saito in the game’s first at-bat, and Saito scored two batters later on a single by Tony Sanchez. Yokubaitis, however, would strike out the next five batters he faced.
Trevor Madden, Diego Carrillo and Nick Razo each tallied run-scoring base hits in the fourth before Steven Blum stepped to the dish. Blum struck out looking, but Razo went to steal second and no one was covering. The catcher’s throw sailed into the outfield and scored Carp’s fourth run of the inning. Bishop coach Brian Moulton called it the turning point in the game.
“We were playing good ball until then. That was disheartening to have a mental error like that,” he said.
Saito followed with an RBI triple (he went 3-for-4 with two doubles and a triple on the day), cutting the Bishop lead to 8-6.
Geary and Sanchez opened the seventh inning with back-to-back singles to end Yokubaitis’ day, and Cervantes stepped to crush the fourth pitch he saw from reliever Ryan Landeros.
With its second win over Bishop of the week, Carpinteria improved to 11-4 overall and 4-1 in the mighty Tri-Valley League.
“This is a huge lift for us as a group… We’ve been behind before and scrapped back but not gotten the reward of winning the game. So now we get the reward and guys are believing,” said Warriors coach Pat Cooney.
Bishop (3-13, 0-8 TVL), meanwhile, is not in the hunt for the league crown, which is why Moulton allowed Yokubaitis to make an unwise but incredibly gutsy move in the sixth.
With Bishop up 8-6, the ever-dangerous Saito came to the plate with two outs and a runner at second. Moulton signaled to his pitcher for the obvious intentional walk, but Yokubaitis looked at his coach and said ‘I want to pitch to him.’
So he did, and Saito got a good piece of it with the count at 3-1, but the ball was caught in right field to Moulton’s delight.
“I wanted to reward him for his guts. We could use more of that on this team,” said Moulton. “It wasn’t a good baseball move, but I wanted to reward him for his guts.”
CARPINTERIA 9, BISHOP DIEGO 8
Bishop Diego…3 4 1 0 0 0 0 — 8 8 1
Carpinteria…….1 0 0 5 0 0 3 — 9 14 0
Yokubaitis, Landeros (7) and Salda; Geary and DCarrillo.
2B — BD: Speier, C: Saito (2), DCarrillo, Thornton. 3B — C: Saito, HR — BD: Jamison (1st inn., 2 on), Gherini (2nd inn., 3 on), C — Cervantes (7th inn., 2 on).
Team Records — BD 3-13, 0-8 TVL; C 11-4, 4-1 TVL.
