VANCOUVER, Wash. — Wilder Baseball stumbled to lose the final game of National Division pool play action 5-3 to Calgary at the Senior Babe Ruth Pacific Northwest Regional tournament at Vern Kindsfather Field today [Friday].
With the loss, Wilder is the National Division’s No. 2 seed in the tournament semifinals and will face a 9:30 a.m. Saturday matchup with the winner of Friday afternoon’s game between the top American Division teams, Lakeside Recovery (Bellevue) and the Crater Lake, Ore. Cardinals.
If Wilder can win the semifinal matchup they will play in Saturday’s championship game at 5:30 p.m.
The tournament champion advances to the Senior Babe Ruth World Series in Ephrata from Aug. 7-14.
Wilder started strong, plating one run in the first inning and two more in the top half of the third inning.
In the first, leadoff batter Dusty Bates singled to right field, advanced to second on a sacrifice bunt by Brett Wright and third on a Brady Konopaski infield single.
Larsson Chapman brought Bates home with a ground out to first base.
In the third inning, Wright walked, Konopaski recorded a base hit to left field and Chapman walked to load the bases.
Tanner Gochnour then grounded to short and the ensuing throw to try and catch Konopaski at third base sailed high, allowing Wright and Konopaski to score.
Wilder starting pitcher Curran Bradley and the Wilder corner infielders had a rough go of it in the bottom of the third inning.
Bradley recorded a fly out on the leadoff hitter, then yielded a walk and a base hit to right field.
The base runner attempted to score on the hit but was thrown out at home by Wright in right field for the second out.
Bradley walked another batter before Chapman made an error on a ground ball to first base to load the bases.
Bradley then walked a run home and gave up an RBI single before the last run of the inning scored on a fielding error by Wilder third baseman Travis Paynter.
Wilder coach Mike Politika had stressed limiting base on balls to his team before the tournament.
“That was an inning that killed that thought process, absolutely,” Politika said of Calgary’s big third inning.
Bradley pitched a scoreless fourth, but allowed one more Calgary run in the bottom of the fifth before giving way to reliever James Grubb.
Wilder’s bats couldn’t get untracked and the team was unable to close the gap in the last few innings.
Calgary 5, Wilder 3
Wilder 1 0 2 0 0 0 0 — 3 6 2
Calgary 0 0 4 0 1 0 0 — 5 5 3
WP- Lading; LP- Bradley
Pitching Statistics
Wilder: Bradley 4 IP, 5 R, 4 H, 2 K, 6 BB, 1 ER; Grubb 1 2/3 IP, 0 R, H, K, 3 BB; Boyer 1/3 IP.
