Prep Baseball: Espinoza leads the way as Adelanto captures the Desert Sky League title
Through four innings in Thursday afternoon’s Desert Sky League matchup between the Adelanto and Silverado baseball teams, Chris Espinoza was at the top of his game.
Espinoza had thrown four shutout innings, allowing just one baserunner and also hit a solo home run in the second inning.
The Saints were up 3-0 and Espinoza was in complete control on the mound at that point.
“Honestly, on top of the world,” Espinoza said about how he felt on the mound through four innings. “I felt like no one could do anything against me.”
The Saints went on to win 5-3, but it all came crashing down for Espinoza in the fifth inning.
A leadoff hit-by-pitch, a bloop single into shallow center field, and a sacrifice bunt from Silverado put runners in scoring position with one out.
Steven Gomez followed up the bloop single with a blast over the left field fence to tie the game.
Espinoza had a feeling this might happen. The Silverado batters had not been chasing much the whole game and made enough contact in those first innings that he felt like a bloop and a blast was a possibility.
From there, Espinoza locked in and pitched on adrenaline the rest of the way. He struck out the next two batters and got out of the fifth inning.
He pitched a clean sixth inning and by the time the seventh rolled around, his team had re-taken the lead.
Espinoza was focused on finishing the game.
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The three Silverado batters in the seventh went down in order and Espinoza finished the complete game victory and Adelanto captured the Desert Sky League title, coupled with a Granite Hills loss, for the second consecutive season.
Espinoza thinks giving up the lead in the fifth inning was good for him the rest of the game.
“It was a good moment for me cause it brought me back to the ground,” Espinoza said.
Adelanto’s small ball success
The first two innings at the plate showcased Adelanto’s successes with the small ball.
Both innings started with the leadoff hitter reaching base followed by the next batter sacrifice bunting him over to scoring position.
In the first inning, Cameren Donaldson started it off with a walk and Jesse Najera bunted him over to second base. Espinoza, the three-hole hitter, followed it up with a single which scored Donaldson and gave Adelanto an early 1-0 lead.
It is a part of head coach Brandon Mikkelson’s philosophy of getting the offense going.
“It’s not automatic for us, we’re not always going to sacrifice when we get leadoff guys on base but that is part of our game depending on who is coming up to the plate and the situation,” Mikkelson said.
To live and die by pickoff
By the fourth inning, Silverado was still down 3-0 and Adelanto was continuing to threaten with baserunners. Nicholas Padilla had to do something to keep Adelanto off the bases and his pickoff move was the way to do it.
Jamall Dixon got on first base with a single but was picked off by Padilla for the second out of the inning.
After Silverado tied it up in the fifth inning, Adelanto had Daniel Fernandez on first base with two outs in the bottom half of the inning.
Padilla got out of the inning with a snap throw to first, picking off Fernandez.
“He usually has a really good move and today our conversation was to add a little bit more to it,” Silverado head coach Harold Ward said. “He was just locked in on those pickoffs.”
However, a bad pickoff throw in the sixth inning led to Adelanto retaking the lead. Padilla threw to first again looking to pickoff Aksel Inzunza, pinch-running for Zachary Viramontes, who got on with a leadoff single. But the ball squirted away from the first baseman, and Inzunza went to second. Two wild pitches in the same at-bat would score Inzunza and give Adelanto the lead.
Adelanto went on to score one more run in the inning with a bases-loaded walk.
This article originally appeared on Victorville Daily Press: Prep Baseball: Adelanto captures the DSL title for 2nd straight season
