Vaqueros Sweep Through West District-On To JUCO World Series
| Final | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | R | H | E | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Yavapai College | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 8 | 13 | 5 |
|
Central Arizona College | 0 | 5 | 2 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | X | 15 | 10 | 1 |
-Blade Contributing Writer Central Arizona College Baseball
(Prescott) - On paper, it looks like Central Arizona College's Vaqueros breezed through the ACCAC regular season, but the fact is, nobody ever breezes through an ACCAC season.
However, there is a strong case to be made that Central whipped through the West District finals this past week, outscoring it's three opponents 50-15 in winning the three games it needed to win.
The Vaqueros have advanced to the 2021 JUCO World Series in Grand Junction starting Saturday May 29th.
The Saturday final score against Yavapai was 15-8 while the Central starters fanned 17 Yavapai batters and the pitchers weren't Mat Olsen or Hunter Omlid. Tyler Woessner, Leo Palacios and full strength DJ Carpenter did what it took and behind four more homers from Dayton Dooney, Dusty Garcia, Jake Jarvis and Seth Beckstead, Central moves on to the JUCO.
In the end, tough and clever pitching decisions, and having almost the entire team healthy finally, was about the best recipe for success a staff could have.
"We had a lot of decisions to make with pitching and did a lot of careful planning on how to handle the metal bats and that wind and potential high scoring games" said head coach Anthony Gilich.
"Our goal was to really just keep these teams to one or two runs in an inning when they score, and we did that well."
In Central's three game sweep, nobody scored more than two runs in any inning against Vaquero pitching.
"And we still had more really good pitching left" Gilich continued.
Starter Tyler Woessner struck out seven while walking only one in five innings, Leo Palacios, in his eight outs, had seven k's, and DJ Carpenter struck out three of his four outs.
All this against a team that hits .339 while leading the ACCAC in batting average.
And leading the ACCAC in home runs and slugging percentage.
You now have the best reason why Central Arizona leads the ACCAC in ERA, and by a lot, strikeouts.
And while Yavapai has hitting to be feared, don't forget that Central hitting leads the ACCAC in runs scored, extra base hits and total bases.
Runs scored.
Beckstead drove in five runs with a bases loaded triple and two-run homerun, Dooney had a couple of rbi's, and with non-stop aggressive hitting and base running, plus scoring with help from everyone else in all but two innings, Central made a very nice statement.
The team put it all together in the West District Finals.
As a guess, I would assume Central would get at the worst, a #7 seed in the ten team JUCO when seeds are announced Monday.
