For six innings Friday night, giving up the leadoff walk didn’t hurt the Sehome baseball team. In the seventh and last inning, it finally did in a Mariners’ 7-5 loss to Sedro-Woolley.
The Cubs took a 2-0 lead in the top of the first inning, but Sehome junior Jacob Gillig shut them down over the next five innings.
Sehome threatened early in the bottom of the first, but left two runners stranded.
That was much of the story for the Mariners until the bottom of the fourth inning when they were able to finally break through and tie the game at 2-2.
Gillig walked to open the inning and senior Matthew Chen took a pitch off the arm to reach first base. Both runners advanced on a sacrifice bunt by senior Jacob Moore and Gillig found himself crossing home on a passed ball on a pickoff attempt. Chen scored on a squeeze bunt by senior Calvin Ketteridge to tie the game.
Ketteridge was later caught at home for the second out of the inning on another attempted squeeze play.
“We were putting the ball in play hard at times, but it took streaking a couple together to put a couple runs across the board,” Sehome head coach Dane Siegfried said. “We put the squeeze down to get the game tied and had it on again, but couldn’t capitalize there.”
Sehome pushed another run across in the bottom of the fifth on an RBI triple from senior Gavin Ortega that scored Aiden Harwick-Koolen to give the Mariners a 3-2 lead with two innings left to play.
Gillig pitched a scoreless sixth, but couldn’t close it out in the seventh.
A leadoff walk came around to score and tie the game and the Cubs’ bats came alive, retaking the lead and stretching it to 7-3 before the Mariners found their way out of the inning.
Ortega notched his second triple of the game in the bottom of the seventh to bring Sehome back within two runs with the score at 7-5, but that’s all the Mariners would get in the inning, ending the game.
“We definitely had a chance there at the end and Gillig threw a great game for us,” Siegfried said. “Leadoff walks came back to haunt us there, otherwise, he did a great job for us. That’s a game we could have won, but you have to tip your cap to [Sedro-Woolley].”
Ortega recorded three hits in the loss and Harwick-Koolen had two.
The loss marked Sehome’s fourth in a row. The Mariner’s next chance at getting back in the win column will be at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at home against Anacortes.
