Kosei Suzuki (Frank Phillips) slugged his first homer of the year as part of a four-hit day for the Lefties. (Photo courtesy of Maevis Photography)
Port Angeles falls in slugfest to close out Bellingham series
Written by: Thomas Johnson
Despite a strong defensive effort, the Lefties could not avoid the series sweep against Bellingham, falling to the Bells 11-8 at Civic Field on Sunday.
Port Angeles built up a 7-2 lead after a six-run third inning, but failed to hold onto the lead as Bellingham slowly chipped away, scoring in each of the fourth through eighth innings.
In comparison, the Lefties’ offense was primarily confined to the third inning, only plating runs in the first and fourth frames outside of their one big inning.
Ya Ramirez (Texas A&M Corpus Christi) scored the first run of the game after replacing Travis Helm (Central Washington), who was struck in the head with a pitch and was taken out of the game for precautionary reasons.
Bellingham took its first lead in the third, plating two unearned runs off of a pair of RBI singles from Jacob Mejia (Cal State San Bernardino) and Colton Bower (University of Washington).
The Lefties offense seemed to finally turn the corner when they sent 12 batters to the plate in the home half of the third. Port Angeles had a string of four straight hits from the top of the lineup as the catalyst for the offense.
Ethan Kodoma had the big hit of the inning, driving a two-RBI double — his first double of the WCL season — into the right-center gap to plate Ramirez and Jeremy Giesegh (Cal State San Bernardino), who both reached with singles.
In total in the third inning, Port Angeles scored six runs in the frame off of four hits, three walks and two hit batters. Despite the loss, the Lefties scored the most they had since June 9 in a non-league contest.
“Just trusting each other, getting on base and doing our jobs today with runners in scoring position,” Roberto Garza-Nunez (Embry-Riddle University) said postgame about what was working well for the team on offense.
Giesegh, as part of another three-hit day, scored the last Port Angeles run in the fourth frame to get the Lefties up to eight runs and an 8-3 lead at the time.
The Bells took their methodical approach to come back and finally tied it back up after a four-run sixth inning. All nine batters in the lineup had an at-bat and Bellingham had a similar stretch to Port Angeles where it had five straight hits.
Bellingham completed the comeback by adding three runs between the seventh and eighth innings.
“Just all around for defense, pitching and hitting, once we’re all collective as one, we’ll just go from there,” Garza-Nunez said.
Every Bells player in the lineup scored a run, but Trent Mallonee (Fresno Pacific) was the offensive force, scoring three runs and adding an RBI.
The Lefties go on the road to Kamloops for a three-game set, before returning to Civic Field for a series against the NorthPaws.
