Hits don't fall at right time as Coachella Valley baseball season ends with playoff loss
Gabriel Ceja knows his Coachella Valley Arabs weren’t ready to lose in the quarterfinal game of the CIF-Southern Section Division 8 baseball playoffs Friday. But the 5-3 loss at home to San Bernardino does take the shine off a strong season for the Arabs.
“I’m proud of these guys. We’ve come a long way as far as the program overall,” Ceja said. “This is my third year as a head coach here, and my goal was to basically put the program in the right direction.”
That direction came close to sending the Arabs to the semifinal of Division 8 on Friday against the Cardinals. But San Bernardino scored a run in the second inning and never trailed after that as Coachella Valley struggled to find timely hits.
The loss dropped Coachella Valley, ranked fifth in the Division 8 poll at the end of the year, to 16-11. San Bernardino, fourth in the final poll, advances with a 15-4 record.
“No one wants to lose. No one wants the season to end with a loss,” Ceja said. “But the guys should be proud.”
The Arabs had runners in scoring position in the second, third and fourth innings, but didn’t score their first run until the sixth inning when they were already trailing 5-0.
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“It’s baseball,” Ceja said of his team’s missed opportunities. “It’s baseball. Sometimes the ball just doesn’t fall your way. And look at their kid, he just poked the ball down the line and it landed. But I give credit to them. They played solid defense when they needed to.”
Leading 1-0, San Bernardino scored twice in the third inning on an RBI-single by Antonio Quintero and a bases-loaded balk called on Arabs starting pitcher Jesus Rivera. In the bottom of the inning the Arabs had a runner on third base with one out but couldn’t drive the run home with an infield popup and a fly ball to center field.
The Cardinals added two runs in the top of the sixth on a walk, a double and a wild pitch that scored a run. That’s when the Arabs’ bat started to come alive, with Coachella Valley scoring two runs in the bottom of the inning. A walk and an error by the Cardinals infield was followed by a two-run triple by Leonel Diaz, cutting the San Bernardino lead to 5-2.
Needing a rally in the seventh, the Arabs found a two-out triple by Alfredo Avalos, who then scored on an infield single by Isaac Munoz. Rivera followed with a single, but Andruw Hernandez flied out to centerfield to end the game. That sent the Cardinals into a celebration and the Arabs into a somber and emotional end-of-the-year post-game meeting.
“They got some timely hits when the needed to, and ours didn’t start falling until the sixth inning,” Ceja said. “Then we ran out of time.”
Despite the loss, Ceja said the Arabs can look back on a solid season that produced a CIF-SS playoff berth and wins in the first and second round of the playoffs. More wins could be coming in 2025, he added.
“We have a really young team. We are only losing two seniors,” Ceja said. “So we will be right back at it next year, competing and hopefully moving past where we’ve gone this year.”
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Coachella Valley baseball misses chances, falls 5-3 in CIF playoffs
