Samohi lacks bats in tournament loss to Palos Verdes
By JON HABER Special to the Daily Press
SANTA MONICA Both teams were riding season-high win streaks heading into Saturday’s Redondo Tournament matchup. But while the Santa Monica High School baseball team limited the high-powered Palos Verdes offense to just five runs, the Vikings couldn’t piece together a late-inning rally to top the Sea Kings.
The result was Palos Verdes (17-3, 2- 0) cruising to a 5-2 victory — the team’s 14th win in a row — over Samohi (9-10, 2-0), ending the Vikings season-high three game win streak in the process.
“There’s not much to say after a game like this when you play a good club,” said Rob Duron, head coach of Samohi. “We played well. They played well. They just beat us.
“There’s no disgrace in losing to a ball club that plays the game the way it should. It was a good game.”
The Sea Kings have been crushing the ball as of late, outscoring opponents by a combined 59-14 in their last four games. Saturday, they wasted no time getting to Samohi starting pitcher Paul Salazar.
Nate Halverson and Marc Benning hit back-to-back, two-out doubles in the first inning to give the Sea Kings an early 1-0 lead.
Palos Verdes extended its lead in the third, plating four more runs. With the bases loaded, Kim Novom doubled home two runs and, after a strike out, Junior Aguirre hit a two-out single to drive in two more.
Salazar (3-2) took the loss. He left the game after five innings, allowing four earned runs and nine hits while recording one strike out. “[The Sea Kings] are a good hitting club. (Salazar) threw a good game. He made a couple mistakes. When you do that against a good club, they’re going to hit it,” Duron said.
With Samohi down 5-0, the Vikings tried to put together a rally against Palos Verdes pitcher Mason Patterson. In the top of the fourth inning, Tyler Scaggs singled with one out and Ricky Gomez doubled. Skiler Pascal followed with a single, scoring both runs.
But those were the only runs either team would see cross home plate for the rest of the game as pitching dominated the later innings. The Vikings threatened in the sixth, but then, according to Duron, batters lost focus and gave away at bats.
“I’ve got to try and somehow teach them attitude,” the coach said. “We want to come out with an attitude first pitch to last. It’s not quite there yet.”
Drew Hammond relieved Salazar and pitched one inning allowing one hit. Duron was encouraged by Hammond’s ability to throw strikes and stay ahead in the count to opposing batters.
Patterson pitched five strong innings for the Sea Kings, striking out six and giving up only two earned runs. Lines came on in relief and struck out six batters in two innings.
While the Vikings record slipped back below.500, the team will get a chance to redeem itself today against the visiting Inglewood Sentinels (7-4, 1-1) in the first of a two-game series.
Samohi will turn to starting pitcher Scaggs to lead the team to a 3-0 start in Ocean League play. However, Scaggs will need to rely on a struggling offense that has lacked consistency at the plate to score some runs.
“We’re not swinging the bats quite as well as I would have hoped,” Duron said. “We looked good in some at bats [against Palos Verdes],but then in the seventh we didn’t look good at all.
“We need to bring that strong attitude from first pitch to last, because we’ve got people that are playing good ball in our league.”
According to Duron, opposing team’s usually bring their best game against Samohi because of last year’s success. Even though most of the players are gone from the Vikings team that made a CIF-SS finals appearance at Dodgers Stadium, opponents still have an extra incentive to beat a team that has historically been successful.
“I told the kids, even though none of us were around last year, that doesn’t matter to other clubs,” Duron said. “They want to make their marks against us. We want to play good people, and we want to win against them. And yes, schools are gunning for us.”
Inglewood will get their shot today against Samohi. First pitch is set to be thrown at 3:15 p.m.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 15, 2008. Read the original PDF.