After waltzing through its opening-round matchup at the American Legion AAA state tournament, Centralia I-5 Toyota/Mountain Dew ran into its first real challenge of the weekend Sunday, but passed by the skin of its teeth in a 4-3 win over the Tri-Cities Titans.
“It feels good, we’re playing good as a team,” right fielder Braden Hartley said. “It’s been competitive, but we’re just having fun.”
For the second day in a row, I-5’s right fielder out of Rochester came through with the key hit late. After Joaquin Velez-Fucal (North Thurston) bombed a one-out double to right field in the bottom of the sixth inning of a 2-2 game, Tri-Cities went to its bullpen with Hartley due up.
“They brought in a new guy for my last AB, so I was sitting first-pitch fastball and seeing if they’d throw it again, and he threw it right down the middle,” he said.
Hartley turned on the first-pitch pipeshot and drove a one-hopper to the wall, scoring Centralia’s Moshie Eport — who’d run for Velez-Fucal — easily.
Two batters later, Avery Staloch (W.F. West) notched his second hit of the day on an RBI single to score Hartley and make it 4-2.
Staloch’s insurance knock proved to be vital, as Tri-Cities put the first two batters of the top of the seventh on base against Tyler McLellan (Timberline). One came in to score, but with two on and one out, McLellan induced a 5-4-3 double play to end it.
McLellan came into the game in a jam, with two in scoring position with one out in the top of the fifth and the heart of the Tri-Cities lineup coming to the plate, but he got out of it with a pair of strikeouts. In the sixth, the Titans put two more men in scoring position, but he worked around them as well.
“He just did a really good job of getting ground balls and letting us turn double plays,” Hartley said.
Alex Overbay (Tumwater) threw 4 ⅓ innings in the start, striking out three and allowing three hits. He also played a role in I-5 Toyota’s first rally, driving the first run of the game home on a one-out single through the right side of the infield in the third inning.
The Dewers would add another run in the frame, but the Titans came right back in the top of the fourth to tie it, and the score would stay at 2-2 until the sixth.
Now, I-5 Toyota is in the winner’s bracket quarterfinal of the tournament and will take on Lakeside Recovery at 6 p.m.
