SNOQUALMIE – The Mount Si Wildcats baseball team last week showed people how good they really have been this season. Mount Si was ranked No. 9 in last week’s 3A washingtonbaseballpoll.com high-school state baseball poll, and they lived up to that newfound billing in a big way.
Last Wednesday a fourth-inning offensive outburst propelled the Wildcats to a surprising rout of top-ranked, and previously unbeaten, Liberty, 9-3. Pitcher Blaine Sutton pitched a complete-game victory, but it wouldn’t have happened that way if it hadn’t been for the huge effort against the Patriots.
In the fourth, Mount Si was down 2-1, but had loaded the bases against Patriots’ starter Adryan Major. In the course of six hitters, the Wildcats scored six runs. The big blow was delivered by Ian Atkinson, who doubled to score Beau Davis, who was hit by a pitch, and Remo Castagno, who reached base on a run-scoring single of his own. After that rally, Mount Si got things done the rest of the way.
Atkinson, Brandon Sales and Adam Dentz each had two RBIs, and Sales and Tyler Starkel also each added two hits.
Boys of summer continue roll against Issaquah
The Wildcats and Issaquah Eagles hooked up Thursday in what was billed as potentially the best game of the season so far in Kingco 3A, and it lived up to its billing. With a large crowd in attendance that included a number of scouts, Mount Si and Issaquah both played stellar ball. It was the Wildcats’ star pitcher Dentz who stole the show; not with his arm, but with his bat.
Dentz’s double in the bottom of the sixth scored pinch runner Aaron McLemore with what turned out to be the game’s lone run, and reliever Brown pitched a 1-2-3 seventh to lift the Wildcats to a big 1-0 win over the Eagles in a classic duel.
“At my first two at bats he (Issaquah pitcher Mike Griffith) threw me first-pitch fastballs so that’s all I was looking for. He was tired and that’s all I was really relying on was his fastball. Everyday we have three guys, me, Tyler (Starkel), and Remo (Castagno) over in the cages by 12 p.m. everyday getting ready for these games. We get in the cages, turn the pitching machine on high and we’re ready for it,” Dentz said.
McLemore scored all the way from first on Dentz’s double, despite having a torn rotator cuff.
“I was the little train that could,” he said.
As for Dentz’s pitching, he pitched six innings, gave up just five hits, one walk and struck out eight. The Eagles’ only significant opportunity to score came in the sixth with two out. Joey Aquino singled and advanced to second on a passed ball. After Matt Gellatly walked, Ryan Aratani hit what likely would have been a run-scoring single to center field but Mount Si’s Craig Weber was able to pick the ball up and fire a laser beam to Sales behind home plate. Sales tagged Aquino at the plate for the third out, ending the inning. The large gathering of Wildcat fans, which had grown steadily during the course of the game as people from the Mount Si softball team arrived to watch, roared. Brown understood the pressure.
“It’s pretty nerve wracking standing out there with a one-run game and coming in. Just following Dentz is a lot of fun,” he said.
The ranking is here to stay for another week, but the team is staying focused.
“I think the guys are focused now. I think that they’re starting to finally buy into the system that Coach [Jeff] Sattler and I are trying to teach them. It is basically just enjoy the journey and not worry about one game. It’s not necessarily take it one game at a time but it’s the bus trip back and forth, its all those games, the practicing everyday, being with the guys on a road trip when we went to Yakima and when we went down to Tumwater,” said Mount Si coach Gary McGregor. “They’re helping each other out. We’re not just sitting on the bench whittling our thumbs. We’re starting to help each other out on defense and offense and I think it’s starting to show in our play on the field.”
The Wildcats play this week at Bannerwood Park in Bellevue. On Thursday Mount Si is under the lights for a contest against Newport, the third contest of the spring in which the Wildcats will compete as the “home” team on a visitor’s field. First pitch against the perennial powerhouse Knights is scheduled for 7 p.m.
