Good Friday was good to the Santa Barbara High baseball team.
Battling the league’s top pitcher, the Dons escaped a heap of danger in the top of the fourth inning and rallied from a 3-0 deficit to beat visiting Buena 6-5 at Eddie Mathews Field. The win puts the Dons alone in first place in the Channel League at 3-1.
Drew Jacobs, Buena’s junior ace, struck out four Dons and allowed just two hits through three scoreless innings before losing the 3-0 lead in the bottom of the fourth.
Danny Zandona went the distance and got the win for the Dons.
“You get down three runs against a good pitcher, and usually everyone thinks it’ll be a disaster after that, but we kept battling to the end of the game. That shows a lot of maturity,” said senior Pepe Gil, who had hits in his first two at-bats.
The second was a one-out, opposite-field double to kick off the Dons’ side of the fourth. Kees t’Sas followed with a single and Colin Eaton walked to load the bases with one out.
Santa Barbara starter Danny Zandona was struck out looking by Jacobs on a 7-pitch at-bat for the second out, but the floodgates then flew open for Santa Barbara. Leadoff-man Cameron Gniadek smacked the first pitch he saw for a double to drive in two runs and cut the Buena lead to 3-2. On the very next pitch, Jack Crummer singled to score two more runs and give Santa Barbara the lead. Collin Dewell had some luck on his side as he hit the infield umpire with a hard groundball that allowed him to get to first safely for a single.
Next up was Joey Gonzales, with Crummer at second and Dewell at first. The shortstop knocked home another run on the Dons’ sixth and final hit of the inning. It was the end of Jacobs’ day on the mound.
“The stakes in the game were high. It’s for first place, and the pitcher on the mound is likely, you know, the big pro prospect in the league. He throws 90-plus miles per hour. So it was a challenge, yes,” said Santa Barbara coach Fred Warrecker.
Santa Barbara’s early deficit could have been much bigger if not for Zandona showing considerable composure in a jam in the top of the fourth. The Bulldogs had already taken a 1-0 lead in the first, and a pair of singles to open the fourth combined with a poor throwing decision to make it 2-0. Zandona walked Chase Smith to put runners on first and second with no outs.
Jacobs hit a slow roller down the third-base line which had double-play potential, but a costly double-error at third base instead led to another run, making it 3-0 with runners at the corners and still no outs.
Zandona stayed cool, however, and picked off Jacobs at first with a nice double-move. He then struck out Collin Boys and got Matt Arve to fly out and end the inning.
“That was huge. We could have lost the game several times, but the good thing is we’re finding ways to win,” said Warrecker. “Sometimes you see a club and they say ‘we just found another way to lose,’ but we’ve been finding ways to win and that’s really contagious.”
The Bulldogs got a run back in the fifth to make it 5-4, but Eaton ended the threat by nailing Matt Burke as he tried to steal second. Jacobs was replaced on the mound by Robert Dietz in the bottom half, and t’Sas hit one deep over the left field fence to push the lead back up to two.
Arve hit a solo homer off of Zandona with one out in the seventh, but the Dons held on for the win. Zandona struck out a pair in the complete-game decision.
The Dons are now 8-1-1 on the year while the Bulldogs are 5-7.
SANTA BARBARA 6, BUENA 5
Buena…100 210 1 — 5 9 0
Santa Barbara…000 510 x — 6 10 3
Jacobs, Dietz (5) and Boys. Zandona and Eaton.
2B — SB: Gil, Gniadek, Barrett. HR — B: Arve (7th, solo), SB: t’Sas (5th, solo).
