San Benito Babe Ruth's Steven Hernandez, left, tells teammate Sergio Cosio to come home standing up against Guam Friday night at the Pacific Southwest 14-year-old Regional Tournament in Palo Alto. After beating Guam 15-2 Friday, San Benito lost to Palo Alto and Hamilton, Ariz.
The San Benito Babe Ruth 14-year-old All-Stars are probably wishing they could have carried over their run total from Friday night.
After routing Mangilao, Guam 15-2 to open the Pacific Southwest 14-year-old Regional Tournament, San Benito lost to host Palo Alto 8-3 on Saturday and to Hamilton, Ariz., 10-6 on Sunday at the Baylands Athletic Center in Palo Alto.
The two losses eliminated San Benito from the regional tournament, where a tourney victory would have sent the local 14-year-old All-Stars east to Quincy, Mass., to compete in the World Series.
"We played a lot of good baseball. It was a good experience at regionals, just to see how we fared," manager Joe Ocampo said. "And I think we fared pretty well."
Starting the tournament off perhaps better than expected, San Benito easily dispatched Guam 15-2 in five innings behind 14 hits.
Capitalizing upon five Guam errors, San Benito plated at least two runs in each inning, and even took a comfortable 4-0 lead after the top half of the first.
"We started off like we wanted to," Ocampo said. "We wanted to get up, get some runs and we did."
After Sergio Cosio (2-for-2, 2 runs) reached on an infield single and Adrian Medina was hit by a pitch, starting pitcher Jacob Cabral (2.1 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 4 K, 2 BB) helped his own cause with a two-run double to center field in the first inning, while Anthony Ocampo followed with an RBI Texas leaguer to shallow right field.
Tanner Carrillo-Zazueta's (2-for-2, RBI, 3 runs) RBI single later in the inning gave San Benito an early four-run lead.
San Benito plated three more runs in the second, highlighted by an RBI double from Medina off the left-field wall.
Dustin Rovella (2-for-4, 3 RBIs, run) and Tyler Quinby (2-for-4, 2 RBIs, run) connected on back-to-back RBI singles in the third inning, while in the fourth, Angel Robles (2-for-3, 2 RBIs, 2 runs) and Rovella hit back-to-back RBI doubles.
In the fifth, Robles and Quinby each hit RBI singles to push San Benito out to a 15-2 lead.
Reliever Rovella pitched the remaining 2 and 2-3 innings, allowing two runs on three hits. Both runs were unearned, however, while Rovella struck out five.
Instead of jumping out to a 4-0 lead against Palo Alto or Arizona, like they had against Guam, San Benito fell behind early in their final two games of the tourney.
"After that game (against Guam), I knew it was gonna be tough. It was gonna be better baseball," Ocampo said.
Palo Alto's BJ Boyd connected on an inside-the-park homer with the first pitch of the game Saturday, highlighting a three-run first for the host team, while Arizona went up 3-0 after one half-inning as well.
San Benito cut each deficit in the bottom half, but committed a combined five errors in the first inning during their final two games.
"Obviously, we could come back and get some runs, but we didn't play an error-free game," Ocampo said. "We had to play error-less, make the plays, and we didn't."
Statistics were not provided of San Benito's last two games at press time. San Benito was rather depleted for their last two games, however, competing with just 10 players.
"It was a good experience, especially for the boys coming back as 15-year-olds - to see what teams are out there and what caliber of tournament this is," Ocampo said. "It's a big accomplishment for the boys. It was a good experience for everybody."
SB 433 32X XX - 15 14 3
GM 001 10X XX - 2 5 5
Andrew Matheson Andrew Matheson is a sports writer for South Valley Newspapers. He can be reached at 831-637-5566 ext. 334 or at amatheson@svnewspapers.com.
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Best in the bus business, again
