Bells keep ’Cats’ bats quiet in opener
Maybe Victoria HarbourCats head coach Graig Merritt could apply for a job as a soothsayer once his baseball days are done: He predicted the best-of-three West Coast League North Division playoff series would be tight. Game 1 on Tuesday night was exactly that as the Bells edged the HarbourCats 3-2 before 1,558 fans at Joe Martin Field in Bellingham, Washington.
Victoria starter Austin Dondanville (6-1 with a 1.72 ERA in the regular season) went five complete inning with five hits and two earned runs allowed and three strikeouts and three walks.
Cameron Schneider had a rough outing in relief, allowing two hits, a run charged to him and four walks in 1 ⁄ innings before being replaced by Greg Casper in the seventh inning. An RBI single by Gunnar Schubert off Casper gave Bellingham the winning run and 3-2 lead.
Schneider was tagged with the loss.
Bellingham starter Jon Olsen from the Pac-12 UCLA Bruins (5-2 with a 2.10 ERA in the regular season) went 7 ⁄ innings with six hits, two earned runs, three strikeouts and no walks for the tidy and well-managed victory.
Bellingham closer Sam Hellinger from Gonzaga, who led the WCL in regular-season saves with 13, closed the door in the ninth inning. The HarbourCats managed a hit off Hellinger, with a one-out single by P.J. Floyd, but could not push the run across.
Bellingham left 11 runners on base but Victoria could not make the Bells pay for that potentially-fatal statistic. The HarbourCats left four runners stranded.
The Bells took a 2-0 lead on a first-inning RBI single by David Banuelos, a thorn in Victoria’s side during all seven meetings between the clubs this year, and a second-inning RBI double by Dean Lawson. Victoria tied it in the third inning with a two-run RBI single by Ben Polshuk that scored Jarron Silva and Matt Lautz.
Victoria set the all-time WCL regular-season wins record at 40-14 while Bellingham was 32-22. Despite that, Bellingham is 5-2 against the HarbourCats this year, including the Game 1 victory on Tuesday.
The second game of the series is tonight at 7 p.m. at Royal Athletic Park with Josh Mitchell (7-0 with a 1.86 ERA) to take the mound for the HarbourCats. A third game, if required, would be Thursday evening at Royal Athletic with Will McAffer (6-2 and a 1.98 ERA) starting for Victoria.
The winner of the North Division playoff series will advance to meet the winner of the South Division playoff in the best-ofthree WCL final. The South final is between the Corvallis Knights (34-20 in the regular season) and the Yakima Valley Pippins (32-22). Corvallis won Game 1 by a 4-2 count Tuesday in Yakima, Washington.