El Capitan falls short in Sac-Joaquin Section D-IV baseball title game

El Capitan High School baseball coach Aaron Ruiz gathered his players near the third-base dugout for one last postgame chat.

The Gauchos came up just short of their goal of a Sac-Joaquin Section Division IV championship with a 6-2 loss to Lincoln on Monday evening at Tony Zupo Field.

It was moments after the players stood and watched as the Fighting Zebras dog-piled to celebrate the title El Capitan set its sights on all season.

“I told them to hold their heads up high,” Ruiz said. “This team has given it everything they had all year long. They did it again today. (Lincoln) was the better team today.

“I told them to walk out with pride.”

It’s easy moments after the final out of a loss to let the disappointment take over, but that wasn’t the case for most of the Gauchos.

“Tomorrow, next season begins,” junior shortstop Braiden Ward was telling teammates.

Sure, there are going to be some players asking, what if?

Starting pitcher Sai Davuluri would like to have been at his best with the title on the line. The El Capitan ace struggled with command of his off-speed pitches, and it forced him to rely on his fastball a bit more.

“Location is always the most important thing,” Davuluri said. “You can throw it as hard as you want, but if it’s right down the middle they are going to hit it. I left a couple pitches up, and they were able to hit it where it found grass.”

Top-seeded Lincoln (26-6) racked up 12 hits and six runs before he exited with two outs in the fifth inning. The Zebras didn’t hit him hard, but they beat out choppers, hit soft liners that fell in the outfield and ground balls that found holes.

“(Davuluri) was a little off with his other pitches,” Ruiz said. “Usually, he’s on. He had a couple close calls that he didn’t get that could have changed things. Lincoln did a good job of battling him and fighting off pitches. They did a good job of driving up his pitch count and putting balls in play.”

The Gauchos (22-8) had an opportunity early to get to Lincoln ace Elijah Garcia. El Capitan’s Chase Whitaker, Brendan Kemps and Elijah Reid all singled to load the bases with one out in the second inning.

Whitaker scored on a wild pitch with leadoff hitter Braiden Ward hitting to give the Gauchos a 1-0 lead. However, with one out and still two runners in scoring position, Garcia struck out Ward and got Mark Sellers to fly out to end the threat.

Ward and Sellers were on fire in the playoffs but couldn’t deliver at that moment.

“We had the right guys up in that spot,” Ruiz said. “He just got our best guys out. That’s who we want up in that position.”

Garcia settled in and retired 14 consecutive El Capitan hitters in a row.

Meanwhile, the Zebras scored two runs in the second inning on a single by Garcia to take a 2-1 lead.

An error helped Lincoln tack on a run in the third, and Charles Middleton drove in two more runs in the fourth to extend the lead to 5-1.

The lead was 6-1 before the Gauchos finally got another baserunner against Garcia in the seventh.

“We just lost momentum,” said Whitaker, who collected two hits. “We lost it and we couldn’t recover.”

The Gauchos mounted a threat in the seventh as Jacob Pilkington reached on an error and Whitaker singled. Kemps then reached on an error, allowing Pilkington to score and cut the lead to 6-2.

The Gauchos had two runners on with no outs, but Garcia retired the next two hitters on fly balls and catcher Ryan Buhler threw out a runner at second trying to steal to end the game.

“It sucks to lose,” Davuluri said. “We battled all year. We’ve been working toward this all year. Last year, we saw Patterson dog pile and this year we saw Lincoln dog pile.

“But this was our first playoff run. We did really well.”

This story was originally published May 30, 2016 at 8:17 PM with the headline "El Capitan falls short in Sac-Joaquin Section D-IV baseball title game."