Committing four errors and allowing a five-run inning won’t win many baseball games. And Tuesday, with a chance to clinch their seventh-straight Tri-County Athletic League championship, the San Benito baseball team proved it.
The Balers (15-2 TCAL, 19-5) gave away their chance to clinch on their home diamond Tuesday, relinquishing a three-run lead and losing to Palma 5-4.
The culprit for the loss came from the team’s missing glove work. Four fifth-inning errors led to all five Palma (15-2, 21-4) runs, pulling the two teams into a tie atop the TCAL standings with one game left to play.
After the loss, the team uniformly called the defeat a “wake-up call.”
“This is just a wake-up call for us,” starting pitcher Jake Cabral said. “We are going to come back stronger. We are going to play harder and never let it happen again. It’s disappointing. It’s senior day and all of Hollister is out here cheering us on and we wanted to win. It sucks not to give it to them.”
For the first four innings, though, it seemed the Balers would get their wish.
After two quiet innings, San Benito erupted for three runs in the bottom of the third inning off Palma starter Brandon Creecy. Designated hitter Anthony Ocampo started the rally for San Benito with a one-out double off the wall in left-center field.
Right fielder Daniel Gonzalez followed with an RBI single in front of Palma left fielder Ruben Rubalcava.
Then the Chieftains started kicking around the ball. After Josh George reached on a Palma error, Ryan Jacob knocked in a run with a single. Jacob Tonascia followed with an RBI as Palma’s Joey Schulman couldn’t handle a ground ball.
But the San Benito threat ended quickly when Jacob was thrown out at home and Marcus Sabatte grounded out to the shortstop.
At that point San Benito was in full control with Cabral limiting the Chieftains to one hit in four innings. But in the fifth, things changed.
“That definitely got me going,” Cabral said after his team grabbed the lead. “I told myself to let the defense do the work. They did good — just a few bad bounces.”
Those bounces changed the game’s tide.
Palma third baseman Anthony Payan opened the fifth with a hard ground ball to San Benito’s third baseman Craig Slibsager, who missed the ball, allowing Payan to reach.
The Slibsager error was a precursor for things to come for the Balers.
Rubalcava singled to set up a bunt by Joey Schulman. With two runners in scoring position, right fielder Nick Ruiz singled and knocked in two runs after center fielder Josh George mishandled the hit for an error.
Two batters later San Benito committed another error to load the bases. Palma’s Marcus House singled to bring in the next two Palma runs.
With Palma leading 4-3, Slibsager made his second error of the inning, handing Palma an additional run.
“Yeah, it is kind of sad,” Slibsager said. “We didn’t come out and we didn’t play good pretty much the whole game. We didn’t have any life until the last inning. We made too many errors — including myself. I made too many errors and we couldn’t get the job done.”
The Balers pulled closer in the seventh inning with an RBI single by Ocampo, but couldn’t tie the game.
But the loss came down to defense, not a lack of hitting or pitching, manager Billy Aviles said.
“We just couldn’t catch the ball,” Aviles said. “You can’t make four errors in one inning and expect a team not to score. We gave them five runs. That’s how it goes. It’s disappointing. I wasn’t thinking about clinching. I was worried about beating Palma.”
He continued: “We obviously did a terrible job of playing catch. That was the story of the game. We out hit them, we just didn’t play good defense. Jake Cabral threw very well and got the ground balls but we couldn’t catch them.”
With a victory over Alisal on Thursday, San Benito can continue its TCAL winning streak. To do that, though, the team needs to play better, Slibsager said.
“It’s a wake-up call and we need to wake up,” he said.
