
BLYTHEWOOD – The Westwood baseball team had a full night Tuesday night in its best-of-three play-in series for the District 4 tournament in the 5A Division 2 playoffs.
The Redhawks finished up Monday’s postponed game one and chalked up a 9-5 victory in eight innings. Then after falling behind 12-0 in game 2, Westwood rallied hard before falling 15-12 to even the series 1-1 and force a game 3 Thursday at Irmo.
“No need to hang your heads here,” head coach Nathan Caldwell told his team after the game. “It’s game three, it’s playoff baseball, we have to be ready to come and play baseball. We’ve got to make sure we take care of our bodies. We’ve got some guys hurting, so we’ve got to go to the lab and figure some things out in the pitching rotation, but we’re gonna make it work.”
No.10 seed Westwood (11-13) and Seventh-seeded Irmo (12-12-1) will play at Irmo tonight to determine who will open the District 4 Tournament Saturday against No.2 seed West Florence.
For both teams, the battle started Monday afternoon and continued straight on into Tuesday.
Westwood led 5-3 in the top of the seventh inning of game one Monday night when Irmo rightfielder Ty Rivers was injured while attempting to field Austin Jeffcoat’s one-out fly ball. Rivers was taken off the field by EMS and the game was postponed until Tuesday night at Westwood before Game 2 could be played.
When play resumed at the Westwood baseball field at 6 p.m. Tuesday afternoon, Irmo went to bat at the bottom of the seventh inning and scored two runs to tie the game at 5 and force extra innings.
The Redhawks went right to work. Elijah Smith drew a leadoff walk to start the top of the eighth inning, and with courtesy runner Kyndall Ragins in for Smith, Xavier DeJesus lined an infield single to put runners at first and second with nobody out.
Kellen Moore drew a walk to load the bases, and Zach Nelson singled to score Ragins and break the tie.
Nathan Caldwell lined out and Austin Jeffcoat flied out, but Jayden Quarles was hit by a pitch and scored DeJesus to make it 7-5 Westwood.
With the bases still loaded Raelyn Seaton drove in two runs on a 2-out single to leftfield to make it 9-5.
Seaton got caught on the basepaths trying for second, but Westwood’s four-run lead proved insurmountable. In the bottom of the eighth with Jeffcoat on the mound, Irmo’s Elliott Graham got on base with a one-out single and Jeffcoat hit Kyler Baker, but Jeffcoat struck out Dylan White and got Caden Hall out on an infield grounder to seal the Game one win.
The Yellow Jackets opened game two with hot bats, taking a 6-0 lead in the first inning off of five hits, a Westwood error, a walk and a hit batter. Irmo added two runs in the third inning and four runs in the fourth to take a 12-0 lead going into the bottom of the fourth inning.
“We had five errors and ended up giving up eight unearned runs,” Coach Caldwell said. “When you get hit in the mouth like that, one thing you can’t do is lay down. You’ve got to chip away whether it’s one run here or one run there. If we could have cut that deficit earlier, two runs, three runs, whatever it may be, we would have had a better chance of pulling the game out.”
Threatened with losing in a 10-run mercy rule game, the Redhawks finally put together some patience at the plate and got four runs on one hit, five walks and a hit batter to cut Irmo’s lead to 12-4.
The Yellow Jackets got a run in the fifth and a run in the sixth inning to take a 14-4 lead going into the bottom of the sixth. Once again threatened with a 10-run mercy rule ending, Westwood responded—and the Irmo pitching staff started issuing walks liberally in the sixth inning.
With the bases loaded and reloaded with walks and scores, Westwood cut the lead to 14-7 with one out and the bases still loaded for DeJesus.
DeJesus, who was 0-for-2 with a walk in three plate appearances, lined a double down the rightfield line that scored Quarles and Seaton and make it 14-9. Gabriel Espinosa held up at third base.
Espinosa scored Westwood’s 10th run on a wild pitch to Kellen Moore and DeJesus moved to third base. Moore drew a walk. DeJesus made it 14-11 when he scored on Zach Nelson’s sacrifice fly, which moved Moore to second.
Nathan Caldwell’s hard ground single to rightfield enabled Moore to score from second and make it 14-12 Irmo.
Westwood loaded the bases again when Jeffcoat and Quarles drew 2-out walks. At the moment Seaton batted, Jeffcoat represented the tying run and Quarles the go-ahead run after hours of walks, errors, and missed opportunities.
Pulling even or moving ahead was not to be for the Redhawks. Seaton made contact on a full-count pitch, but it was a foul pop-up that landed in the glove of Irmo third baseman Hunter Parsons for the third out.
The Yellow Jackets added a run in the top of the seventh inning and took care of Westwood batters in the bottom of the frame to force a game three.
For Thursday’s game, Coach Caldwell is looking for the team to have the kind of energy in the late innings Tuesday to show itself in the early innings of game three.
“We’ve got to have that type of energy from inning one through inning seven, regardless of however many innings we play,” he said.
West Florence – 0-0-0-4-0-1-3 – 8, 11, 1
Westwood – 1-0-0-0-0-0-0 – 1, 7, 2
WP: Cooper Coleman, 6 IP, 6H, 1R, 1ER, 2BB, 7K.
WF – Cooper Coleman 2-3. Matthew Brown 2-4. Chase Anderson 2-4. Ryan Coscetti 3 RBI. Avery Weaver 2 RBI. W – Kellen Moore 2-4, 2B(2).
Westwood – 1-2-0-0-0-1-14 – 9, 10, 2
Irmo – 3-0-0-0-0-0-2-0 – 5, 5, 3
WP: Nathan Caldwell, 6 IP, 4H 3R, 3ER, 1BB 5K.
W – Zachary Nelson 2-5, 2RBI. Jayden Quarles 2-3, 2B. Xavier DeJesus 2-4. Raelyn Seaton 2 RBI. Austin Jeffcoat 2B. I – Ty Rivers 2-3, 2B. Hunter Parsons 2B, 2 RBI.
Irmo – 6-0-2-4-1-1-1 – 15, 11, 0
Westwood – 0-0-0-4-0-8-0 – 12, 7, 5
WP: Cooper Klosterman, 3 IP, 3H, 3R, 3ER, 4BB, 1K.
I – Jayllen Fray 5-5, 2B, 5 RBI. Dylan White 2-2, 2B, 2 RBI. Caden Hall 3 RBI. W – Nathan Caldwell 2-3. Xavier DeJesus 2B, 3 RBI. Austin Jeffcoat 2B. Jayden Quarles 2 RBI.