Scouts watch Eagles’ Brassfield baffle Wolf Pack
Despite more than half a dozen baseball scouts pointing radar guns at him from the stands, Bakersfield Christian’s Mason Brassfield remained calm and collected while pitching against Ridgeview on Tuesday afternoon.
The 6-foot-4-inch lefthander has gotten accustomed to the attention that comes with being a high schooler who can throw 95 miles per hour.
Brassfield looked very much like a top MLB prospect versus the Wolf
Pack, hurling five shutout innings in the visiting Eagles’ 11-5 victory. The game wasn’t nearly as close as the final score.
“It doesn’t make me nervous,” Brassfield said of having seven or eight scouts in attendance. “It actually motivates me to keep on working harder and make sure that I know I’m going the right way and the right direction.”
When Brassfield (6-2, 0.63 ERA) left the game BCHS (15-5, 7-0 SYVL) was up 11-0 and on the verge of ending the game early because of the 10-run rule.
He exited having allowed just one hit, and an infield single, and had struck out 10 of the 18 batters he faced.
Brassfield, who rarely needs much run support, got plenty from a BCHS lineup that took advantage of control problems by a quintet of Ridgeview pitchers.
Wolf Pack (9-10, 2-2 SYVL) pitchers issued 11 walks and hit one batter during a battle between arguably the top two teams in the South Yosemite Valley League.
After Tuesday’s beatdown of a good Wolf Pack team there’s little debate that, at least right now, the Eagles are the league’s team to beat. BCHS improved to 7-0 in SYVL games and has outscored its opponents in those games 69-11.
The Eagles and Wolf Pack meet for a third and final time this season on Thursday. Their first game saw BCHS edge Ridgeview 1-0 in extra innings.
The Eagles had 11 hits against Ridgeview on Tuesday, including a pair of doubles by Trent Martin. His first-inning two-bagger helped BCHS plate two runs.
Two innings later the Eagles extended their lead to 6-0 by stringing four hits together, one of them Martin’s second double, sandwiched around three walks and a fifth hit of the frame.
BCHS batted around in the fifth and came one batter short of doing it again in sixth when it scored two more runs to pull ahead 11-0.
An inning earlier the Eagles plated three runs, spurred by Kaydn Kirkley’s two-out, three-run
triple.
Brassfield helped himself with the bat, reaching base four times with one hit and three walks in four trips to the plate.
“Mason came out and threw strikes, got us going,” BCHS coach Mark Ratekin said. “Our offense has started to pick it up the last few games. We’re starting to execute with runners in scoring position, so we got off to an early lead and just held it from there.”
Ridgeview’s offense finally got going once Brassfield left, scoring five runs and smashing eight hits during the final two innings.
The Wolf Pack’s biggest offensive producer was leadoff hitter Jordan Brito, who went 3 for 4 and had the only hit against Brassfield.
Two other Ridgeview players had multiple hits. After striking out twice against Brassfield, Emilio Anguiano had two late-game singles, Wolf Pack cleanup hitter Max Delagarza went 2 for 3 with a walk and three RBIs.
“You face Brassfield and it’s tough,” Ridgeview assistant coach Robert Shahan said.
“That kid’s very special. He’ll be pitching at the highest level of this game. The couple years we’ve been able to get him out of the game kind of early and we’ve won a couple of those games. But this year, his senior year, we’ve seen him twice and mowed through us both times.”
The only time Ridgeview threatened to score against Brassfield came in the third inning when, after Brito’s high chopper to shortstop broke up the lefty’s no-hitter, the Wolf Pack made two outs before drawing back-to-back walks. But with the bases loaded and two outs, Isaac Carrillo swung and missed a two-strike fastball from Brassfield that was low and inside.
“I thought it was a pretty good game,” Brassfield said. “The team we played — they compete each time I pitch against them. It’s a really good team. For me, overall, I feel like I had a pretty decent game. I feel like there are some things I could have worked on, but for the most part I feel like it was a pretty productive outing.”Baseball