Both Tumwater and W.F. West’s old banes showed up early Saturday in Chehalis. For the T-Birds, it was errors; for the Bearcats, free passes.
The only question was which team would figure out its respective issues first, and Tumwater answered in decisive fashion. The Thunderbirds cleaned things up defensively after a tough first inning and rode a Trenton Gaither gem to a 5-2 win, capping a two-day sweep and vaulting into first place in the 2A EvCo standings.
“I think they have the confidence, and I always tell them, ‘You’re going to make a mistake, but what happens afterwards?’” Tumwater coach Lyle Overbay said. “They played clean the rest of the way.”
Tumwater let the leadoff batter in the bottom of the first reach on a ground ball through the legs, then let him come around to score on a throwing error on a sacrifice bunt.
The T-Birds ended up committing another error, forcing Gaither to get six outs in the frame, but the Wenatchee Valley got out of it with just the one unearned run to his line.
“I come back to them after the first inning, and say, ‘We just had our worst inning ever with three errors, and we only gave up one run. So we’re good,’” Overbay said. “Then they kind of relaxed. I think they were a little nervous, trying to do too much, but they reset, and got after it.”
The rest of the way, Gaither shoved. The Wenatchee Valley College commit took a no-hitter into the sixth inning, striking out seven and giving up two knocks and two free passes.
Coming out of a bit lower of a release point, the lefty worked the inside corner all game long against W.F. West’s righty-heavy lineup, switching between a two-seam fastball that rode back into the strike zone and a slider that burst up the Bearcats’ handles for weak contact.
“He just kept pounding the zone and getting outs when he needed them,” Overbay said.
After the first inning, Gaither’s only real jam came in the bottom of the third, when two free passes put runners on with no outs, but after W.F. West failed to bunt them over, the T-Birds killed the rally with a double play, striking Ross Kelley out before Graysen Reveal fired down to catch Deacon Meller off second base.
A day after W.F. West walked nine Thunderbirds, the Bearcats struggled with their command again, issuing nine more walks and hitting one batter.
“We’ve got all of our hitters back from last year, and they’re that much stronger,” Overbay said. “But I think the biggest difference with these guys is that they’re taking those walks and trusting their teammates behind them to get the base hit.”
Tumwater played the part of the opportunistic guests early when Riggs Westlund walked the bases loaded in the second, with Landon Roy cueing a short blooper that just fell out of the reach of a glove for a two-run single. The next inning, Brayden Oram hit a two-out single and went all the way to third when the throw in went wild, and came home three pitches later on a ball to the backstop.
Westlund ended up walking five in 4 ⅓ innings of work, while striking out five and giving up five hits. He left in the top of the fifth and gave Connor Coleman a bases-loaded jam to deal with, and the T-Birds scored one more run — charged to Westlund — on an infield single.
Coleman walked four batters himself, but worked around them all.
“Our pitchers have shown that if we throw strikes, put the ball in the zone, and try to get swings, that we’re pretty good,” WFW coach Jesse Elam said. “Nine walks is not indicative of who we are. I told the kids that this is going to be a turning point for us. We can use it as a catapult for how we want the rest of the season to go. It’s just about making adjustments and throwing strikes.”
W.F. West will try to snap its short skid out west Tuesday when it goes to Aberdeen to open a two-game set against the Bobcats, while Tumwater will get the next five days off. The two sides are set to face off once more in the regular season next Friday in Tumwater.
