The 2016 Carbon High School baseball team sure seems to have a flare for the dramatics and definitely wants to play as much baseball as humanly possible in the last week of the season.
The Dinos traveled to Juan Diego High School to play their first two games of the 3A State Tournament on Saturday. While the Dinos won both of the games, moving them into the next week of the tournament 2-0, it was not without the effort of the entire team making it through 21 innings of play.
The Dinos faced Park City High School in the first round of the tournament in a 14-inning game that lasted almost four hours. Fourteen innings is equivalent to what would be two high school baseball games. The Dinos were up in the game 2-1 going into the bottom of the seventh inning, after senior Cole Fossat hit a solo home run in the sixth. Park City tied the game on and RBI single, and then the stalemate ensued.
Carbon and Park City played six innings of scoreless baseball, although each team had numerous chances of scoring the go-ahead run. In the top of the 14th inning, senior Dallyn Mower finally gave the Dinos an edge, hitting a solo home run. Carbon was able to hold Park City in the bottom of the inning, with senior Mitch Olson striking out two of the three batters he faced and the Dinos won 3-2.
“I feel a lot better than had we lost, so we sure had a lot of opportunities that we kind of gave away, but we did what we needed to to win,” said head coach Jeff Cisneros. “I’m proud of what they did. I mean throughout all the mistakes we made we found a way to win, so that’s all you can ask them to do is battle like that, so I’m proud of them.”
Fossat pitched 10 of the Dinos’ 14 innings, dominating on the mound. Fossat tallied 12 strikeouts and allowed just two runs to cross the plate, one earned, and three walks.
“I’m hanging a little bit, I’m tired,” said Fossat. “It was hot. That infield turf is really hot. But we buckled down and played sold D (defense) and [went] out to a get a run.”
Sophomore Zac Bradley earned the win on the rubber for the Dinos, pitching three scoreless innings following Fossat, with Olson coming in to finish off the game in the 14th.
“Pitchers did an excellent job. Defense was solid. We didn’t make errors today,” said Cisneros.”
The Dinos had fallen behind after just the first inning of the game, after Park City scored a run on a passed ball. However, the Dinos tied the game in the fifth also on a passed ball.
Because of the length of the first game, the Dinos had to travel 30 minutes south to Pleasant Grove High School for their second game of the day. Cisneros said after the first game that it would be tough having to travel between games, something the team does not normally do, especially since they had just finished such a long game. However, the Dinos were able to pull out another victory, carrying their momentum over from the previous game.
“We were just flat to start, but 14 innings you’re going to be flat,” said Cisneros. “We talked about the last two or three innings of just playing with some heart and I thought we did that. The tank’s running pretty low, but we’ll take what we can get.”
Carbon faced Cedar City High School, who had won its first game that morning 13-7 over Juan Diego. The Dinos fell behind 3-0 after the Redmen scored a run in each of the third, fourth and fifth innings. The Dinos’ fatigue was apparent, until Fossat tied the game on a three-run home run in the sixth, his second knock of the day.
After holding the Redmen scoreless in the top of the seventh, the Dinos came up to bat in the bottom of the inning, with extra innings looming ahead once again. Carbon loaded the bases with Mower hitting a single, junior Chase Morgan getting hit by a pitch and senior Taylon Abeyta reaching on an error by the second baseman. On four pitches, senior Trey Richardson was walked, which gave the Dinos a walk-off 4-3 win.
“This team’s got a lot of heart,” said Fossat. “We’ve got a lot of seniors, a lot of leadership on this team, we’ve been here before. We go out and do what we have to do.”
Olson pitched the complete seven innings, only allowing three runs, one earned, on two strikeouts and three walks.
“Mitch did a great job on the mound,” said Cisneros. “Cedar City is a great team, even though they’re the four seed from the south… we just beat a good team. I’m proud of our effort today.”
Carbon enters the third round of the tournament 2-0, but players and fans from last year know that this is all too familiar. The Dinos entered this phase of the 3A State Tournament in 2015 2-0 as well, and then did not score a run in their next two games and were eliminated from the tournament. Carbon will try to not repeat history this year, looking not only for a run in the next round, but a win as well.
“We went in 2-0 last year and then we didn’t score a run when we got down to St. George and it’s like I just told them out here, we’re not going to Kearns next week to just be happy,” said Cisneros. “We’re going there to win and you have to score wins. We didn’t score a lot of runs today (Saturday), but if our pitching and defense holds up like that we’ll be fine.
Carbon will play against Pine View High School, the number one seed from Region 9, at 11 a.m. on Thursday at Kearns High School.
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