Baseball: Mtn. View tops Corona del Sol in 8 innings

March 1, 2019 by Les Willsey, AZPreps365


Mountain View's Luc Johnson (left) and Tyler Barnes delivered key hits in the eighth inning to help the Toros edge Corona del Sol, 4-3. (AzPreps365 photo).

Mountain View's baseball team is winning close games with the season 10 days old. The Toros remained unbeaten at 4-0 on Friday pushing across a run in the bottom of the eighth to edge visiting Corona del Sol, 4-3, in a 6A non-region game.

The ingredients in Mountain View's second one-run victory of the season were offense from seniors Tyler Barnes and Luc Johnson. Both collected a pair of hits and drove in three of the Toros four runs. Pitching from the tag-team trio of Sean Rimmer, Travis Densmore and Dallas Wise. And defense that did not commit an error.

Barnes picked the right day to contribute his first hits of the season after going 0 for 8 the first three games. He singled in a run in the first inning to put Mountain View up 2-1 -- two batters after Cam Jowaiszas tied it at 1 with a fielder's choice.

Barnes began the winning rally in the eighth with a one-out, laser-beam triple to right-center. Corona del Sol (1-2) opted to intentionally walk the next two batters to load the bases. That brought up Johnson, the Toros' ninth-place hitter and DH. He picked on the first pitch from Corona's Jack Shobinger and grounded it sharply to left to score Barnes with the game winner.

"I went up trying to hit it in the air to the outfield to get the run in," Johnson said.

 Barnes said he's kept working hard every night, knowing hits will start to fall. 

"We know he is a good hitter," Mountain View coach Mike Thiel said. "As the games have gone on he's swung it better."

Thiel felt his team had an advantage given Corona was playing its third game this week (all power-ranking games) while the Toros played a game early in the week and were able to avoid using their top three pitchers.

Rimmer gave us two runs in 2 1/3 innings of work. Corona's Hunter Haas and Brian Kalmer touched Rimmer for RBI's in the first and third, respectively. Densmore tossed 2 2/3 scoreless innings, allowing a walk and fanning two. Wise was the winning pitcher throwing the final three innings and giving up a run in three hits over that span. 

Haas was Corona's top hitter going 2 for 2 with two walks and two RBI. Corona's hottest hitter this week -- Ulises Jimenez -- was 1 for 4. In the Aztecs other games Tuesday and Thursday Jimenez was 5 for 7 with 8 RBI.