Baseball: Hamilton clubs Mountain Ridge for D-I crown

May 17, 2016 by Les Willsey, AZPreps365


Hamilton may have lost to Mountain Ridge five days ago, but coach Mike Woods was comfortable not changing a thing in Tuesday evening's rematch.

No. 2 starter Cole Bellinger had plenty of rest since his no-decision May 12 in a 4-3 loss to the Mountain Lions that dropped Hamilton to the loser's bracket.

Bellinger was determined to exceed his first outing and the junior right-hander did just that. Bellinger delivered four shutout innings before lightning and rain delayed the game an hour and by that time his teammates conjured up a 5-0 lead that led ultimately to a 12-3 win at Diablo Stadium. It was Hamilton's fifth baseball title -- all of them coming from 2003 forward. Hamilton, which opened the season 12-0, finished up 27-7. Mountain Ridge had a nine-game win streak snapped and ended up 26-6.

"No hesitation pitching Cole," Woods said. "He pitched seven innings and gave upone run (earned, two unearned) the first time. He pitched great. He was better this time, and gave us what we needed. He didn't want to come out and was not happy about it. But we had the delay and we had Zane (Strand) ready to go."

It was Hamilton's night for the second consecutive night after its softball team won the D-I title 3-0 over Pinnacle on Monday. The Huskies didn't mind even if they had to toil nearly four hours to come home with the best trophy. Hamilton cranked out 16 hits with every starter contributing at least one hit. The defense was sound (two errors), especially in comparsion to Mountain Ridge, which made seven errors in a very uncharacteristic effort by the Mountain Lions. The timing was incredibly bad when combined with Hamilton's hitting.

Much of Hamilton's run production surprisingly came from the bottom of its order. In fact the game's pivotal hit came from No. 9 hitter Chris Collins in the top of the fourth. Hamilton was nursing a 1-0 lead at the time and had the bases loaded thanks to a hit, walk and error. Collins battled Mountain Ridge starter Tommy Lowe tough to a 3-2 count. He fouled off a couple 3-2 pitches before finally laced a two-run single to right-center. The ball as bobbled in center and that allowed a third run to score and Collins to reach third. Colliins capped the four-run rally by scoring on Brayden Merritt's single.

Bellinger pitched out of two-out, bases loaded jam in the bottom of the inning to keep the score 5-0. That's when lighning hovered over head and the game was stopped for an hour. Bellinger allowed four hits, one walk and struck out one.

"I had just faced them and knew what to throw," Bellinger said. "I just did what I could do to help. Our offense and defense. It was a team effort right there."

Hamilton added single runs in the fifth and sixth after play resumed and Mountain Ridge picked up a run off Strand when he relieved in the bottom of the fifth. A 7-1 lead in the seventh expanded to 12-1 as Hamilton sent 10 batters to the plate and added its final five hits. The only Huskies' starter without a hit heading to the seventh was Jake Desiderio. He remedied that with a bases-loaded triple to right to highlight the inning.

Mountain Ridge kept battling in its final at-bat, scoring two runs of Strand on three hits. Strand got the final out with a kick-save of a grounder off the bat of Mitchel Sullivan that Strand retrieved in time to throw Sullivan out and start the celebration.

Drew Swift  and Ricky Ramsdell had three hits apiece for Hamilton. Collins, Nick Bruesser had two hits each and Desiderio and Collins combined for six RBI. Tristian Thomas had two hits and an RBI for Mountain Ridge.