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5A baseball: La Cueva to meet Cleveland for state title
What the Cleveland Storm could not accomplish in the regular season, they will have a chance to do on Saturday night.
No. 3-seeded Cleveland never trailed Friday night against District 1 rival Rio Rancho, and the Storm punched their ticket to the Class 5A baseball championship game, beating the Rams 5-3 in the semifinals at Santa Ana Star Field.
Cleveland (24-6) faces No. 1 La Cueva (26-3) at 7 p.m. Saturday at UNM.
The Bears, who ousted Organ Mountain 7-3 in the early semifinal Friday, beat Cleveland twice in the regular season — 5-0 in the metro semifinals on March 22, and 5-4 in Rio Rancho on April 17.
No. 3 CLEVELAND 5, No. 2 RIO RANCHO 3: The Storm never trailed, but this game was in doubt and tension filled until the last pitch, as sophomore reliever Xavier Vasquez induced a fly ball to center with runners at second and third in the bottom of the seventh to end the game and earn a save.
Cleveland is in the state final for the first time in five years, and is searching for its first blue trophy in baseball.
"La Cueva is just absolutely a great team," Storm coach Shane Shallenberger said. "We have to try to piece something together to (get over the hump)."
But Cleveland is also feeling pretty good, after tense victories Thursday in the quarterfinals and again on Friday.
"I think we kind of started peaking at the right time, and the kids kind of felt that," Shallenberger said. "The confidence started coming with that."
The Storm on Friday scored the game’s first four runs. Jaden Davis, an NMSU signee and the starting pitcher, singled home a run in the second.
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In the third, with two runners on and two outs, Anthony Del Angel tripled to deep center, scoring two runs. He also came around on the play when the ball was misplayed for an error in the outfield and it was 4-0 Cleveland.
Casen Savage of the Rams (25-4) belted a solo home run to lead off the bottom of the third, and Sean Vigil added a sacrifice fly to cut the deficit in half.
Gabe Nelson’s RBI double to right scored Davis in the top of the fourth for a 5-2 lead, and that’s the way it stayed until almost the end.
Joseph Stevenson, who pitched a two-inning save on Thursday night against Los Lunas, pitched perfect fifth and sixth innings Friday night. But Rio Rancho got the first two batters aboard in the seventh with base hits, and the Storm turned to Vasquez, a lefty, who barely escaped the threat in front of a strong crowd at UNM.
Cleveland split four games season with Rio Rancho. The Rams won the first two.
No. 1 LA CUEVA 7, No. 4 ORGAN MOUNTAIN 3: The Knights were certainly not without their chances. They left eight runners on base in the final three innings alone, but it was the Bears’ defense that carried them into the final.
“I’ve said it before, it’s kind of what we pride ourselves on, is our defense,” La Cueva coach Gerard Pineda said. “And it showed up big (today). And we were able to make some key plays in key situations. And they were definitely momentum changers.”
A summary:
Organ Mountain (24-6) had the first two runners on in the second, but a double play ended that threat.
Organ Mountain had two runners on in the fifth with one out, trailing 6-3, before La Cueva starter Braiden Reynolds got a huge strikeout, and first baseman Connor Baughman — who plays first when Reynolds is pitching — made a tremendous diving stop on a ground ball that was bound for right field and that would have scored a run, and he popped up and threw to Reynolds for the out.
Organ Mountain loaded the bases in the top of the sixth, down four runs. With two outs, Rey Ponce flew to right field; Evan Lane made a terrific running catch for the Bears, grabbing the ball with his glove hand while clutching his hat in his right hand, an odd sight. (Even Pineda chuckled at this).
And Organ Mountain loaded the bases again in the seventh inning, too, before coming up empty.
“We take pride in our defense. That’s one of the things that has carried us all year long,” said La Cueva left fielder Brayden Likar, who drove in two runs in the victory, including a rare inside-the-park home run in the fifth, the game’s final run.
“They made some good plays, plays when they needed to,” Organ Mountain coach Carlos Lara said. “And that one inning cost us.”
The inning to which he refers is the bottom of the third, when La Cueva, leading 1-0, scored five times.
The rally began (extremely) modestly, with consecutive bunt singles by Jackson Hix and Gehrig Pineda. Which was followed by Ramon Martinez getting hit by a pitch.
Reynolds ground hard to second; the ball came home, wildly, and two runs scored. The next batter, Reid Jacobson, bashed a two-run triple off the base of the right-field wall for a 5-0 lead, and he scored on a Likar sacrifice fly.
“Sometimes,” Likar said, “small ball is the way to go.”
There was irony to this for the Knights.
“Funny,” Lara said, “because we’ve been doing that all year long, laying down bunts and getting big innings out of it. Today it was the other way around.”
The Knights scored all their runs in the fourth, including a two-run bloop double by Alex Venegas. Organ Mountain outhit La Cueva 11-9. But the Knights also led in the error category, 2-0.
La Cueva was up 6-3 in the fifth when Likar lifted a ball to right. It was misplayed by the outfielder, as he watched the ball bounce over his head and roll to the wall. Likar blazed around UNM’s fake grass for the unusual home run.
