Senator 2nd baseman Connor Pradere looks back a runner at third on his way to making a play at first during an 11-3 tournament loss to Manogue at Peccole Field in Reno.
For 4 1/2 innings, it looked like Carson High was headed toward another nail-biting finish.
Deadlocked 2-all entering the bottom of the fifth, the Manogue Miners scored six runs and cruised to an 11-3 win over Carson in a Division I regional elimination game at Peccole Park.
Carson ends the season with an 18-16 overall record, the first winning record in coach Bryan Manoukian’s three-year tenure as head coach after taking over for Cody Farnworth.
“We ran out of strikes,” Manoukian said after a short talk with his team. “Manogue is an excellent hitting team. Their flares started to fall, and they got the big hits when they needed them.
“I think we ran out of energy. You look at the last five or six games, and we’ve been in a lot of one-run games.”
Manogue’s top three hitters — Alec West (3-2-2-2), Web Charles (4-2-2-3) and Shon Plamondon (4-1-2-2) — went a combined 6-for-11 with five runs scored and seven RBI. Those three alone out-hit the entire CHS team.
Meanwhile, Carson’s offense was non-existent against right-hander Brandon Vial, who allowed just two hits and two earned runs in his route-going performance.
“Vial did a good job keeping us off balance,” Manoukian said. “He was able to throw his off-speed stuff for strikes.”
Carson’s first hit came when Conner Pradere led off with a single back up the middle. He went to second when Josiah Pongasi was hit by a pitch and eventually scored on a groundball to first by Brandon Allen.
Manogue evened the game in the bottom of the first when West slammed a homer over the fence in right on a 3-1 pitch by Allen, who allowed six runs and six hits in 4.2 innings of work.
The Miners went ahead 2-1 in the third when West doubled home Lucas Howard, who reached on a walk. Carson evened the game in the top of the fifth when Kyle Krebs walked, moved to second on a passed ball, to third on a flyball to right by Seamus Burns and scored on an error.
The roof caved in on Carson in the bottom of the inning.
With one out, Howard drilled a ball in the left-centerfield gap. Burns took a bad angle on the ball and it got by him for a double.
“Seamus took a shallow angle,” Manoukian said. “I don’t think he realized how hard the ball was hit.”
Howard took third on a wild pitch, and for some reason stayed there when Blaine Smith grounded out to second baseman Pradere, who beat him to the bag for the second out.
West walked and moved to second on defensive indifference. Charles followed with a two-run single to make it 4-2. Charles stole second and scored on Plamondon’s double to deep right for a 5-2 lead which turned out to be Allen’s last pitch of the game. Kyle Krebs came on and yielded a walk to Casey Trosclair and singles to Conner Brewster and Anthony Galatti, the latter scoring two more runs to make it 8-2.
Carson scored its final run in the sixth when Krebs bombed a one-hop double off the fence in center. He moved to third on a balk and scored on Allen’s second run-scoring infield out of the game.
Cody Azevedo came on in the sixth and gave up three runs, two coming when Burns and Pongasi didn’t communicate on Charles’ high pop-up to short left.
An ugly way to finish the season, but it doesn’t diminish what a young Senators team accomplished.
“I think we had a lot of success,” Pongasi said. “We accomplished what we set out to do. We proved we’re a good baseball team.”
“Overall we had a very successful year,” Manoukian said. “We played young at times and really well at times. We were very competitive against the top teams in the league.”