The Rochester baseball team headed west Tuesday to capture a crucial victory in Aberdeen in its regular season finale, 7-4.
The Warriors rolled into Aberdeen with a little extra motivation, as they fought to make sure their season didn't take the same turn it did last year. With their win over the Bobcats, the Warriors clinched the third seed in the 2A Evergreen Conference, and avoided the pigtail matchup the EvCo’s fourth seed is forced to play into the district playoffs next week.
“I couldn’t be more proud of them,” Rochester coach Brad Quarnstrom said. “Every single guy in the last couple of weeks, the way we’re coming together and playing for each other, it's been a lot of fun.”
Last season, the Warriors had to play a play-in to the pigtail against Black Hills, taking a victory, before they fell in the pigtail matchup against the Greater St. Helens’ League’s fifth seed, a game away from the district quarterfinals.
Braden Hartley threw about as close to a complete game as one could get, hitting his pitch count in the bottom of the seventh inning with two outs. Hartley tossed 6 2/3 innings while allowing six hits and three earned runs, as well as striking out seven Aberdeen batters. Mason Ubias came in for a one-out game-closing performance.
“It’s probably his best outing of the year,” Quarnstrom said of Hartley. “He wants it every game, but today there was a lot on the line and gave us everything he had. He wanted the ball in that situation.”
The Warriors struck first blood in the top of the second with back-to-back RBI singles from Mason Armstrong and Kole Smith. Then went down 4-2 to a big Bobcat fourth inning. But the Warriors answered back when Hyde Parrish drove in two runs with a double to left field, followed by a Brady Baird RBI-double to make up a three-run inning of their own.
Hayden Pietras doubled in the top of the sixth to tack on one more insurance run, as the Warriors held off the Bobcats to travel home with a victory.
Quarnstrom shouted out his seniors, Hartley, Parrish, Baird, Owen Gillaspeie, and Jyson O’Connor, for helping the Warriors right the ship and earn a spot into the district playoffs.
“They’ve all been doing everything they could to get us where we’re at,” he said.
Rochester will be traveling south to face the GSHL two-seed in the first round of the District 4 playoffs next Tuesday.
