RiverDogs roll to an unfinished classic title

EPHRATA - A tournament title of any kind is a good one, but sometimes it would just feel a little more fulfilling if it was earned in the field of play.

Yesterday, the Columbia Basin RiverDogs baseball team were awarded the championship of the Central Washington Baseball Classic at Johnson-O'Brien Stadium without having to throw a pitch.

That's because the team they were supposed to play, the Spokane Heat, decided to cut loose and go home early due to the final being scheduled for a 6 p.m. start.

The RiverDogs (9-3) had lost their only pool game to the Heat on Saturday, 12-0, when much of the beef of their lineup and pitching were unavailable.

"They didn't want to stay until 6 p.m. to play the championship game and wanted to get home," RiverDogs coach Dave Johnson said. "We would have had almost all of our guys back. We would have had better pitching and I think we would have hung right with them. In the first game we had a lot of young kids in there from the second team so we would have been much more competitive in this game."

The RiverDogs got into the final with a 9-0 five-inning, semifinal trouncing of the Hurricanes earlier in the morning, behind the one-hit pitching performance of Luke Valdez (Moses Lake High School). They also got 2-for-3 batting performances by Cameron Alvarado (Moses Lake) and Chris Walker (Naches Valley), with both driving in two runs apiece.

On Friday, the RiverDogs kicked off the tournament with an 8-0 win over Pinnacle Baseball in a game played at Big Bend Community College.

The RiverDogs got out right out of the gate, scoring four runs in the bottom of the first inning and behind an ensemble pitching performance, cruised to the win.

Alvarado kick started the rout with a leadoff triple and finished 3-for-3 from the plate. Walker went 2-for-3 with two RBI.

"Alvarado set the tone early with the triple," RiverDogs manager Randy Boruff said. "Cameron is getting a lot of attention from some colleges and has really worked hard on his hitting. The light bulb has gone on and he is obviously hitting the ball hard."

Another highlight to the opening victory was the first pitching performance of Mitch Yada (Moses Lake) who is battling back from an ankle injury.

Yada threw 25 innings in his one inning outing.

"I know from being rusty he was okay," Boruff said, "There were no expectations since he pitched in a feeder game the next day and he wanted to get about 25-30 pitches. He wabted to be rested for that game."

A number of players participated in feeder games around the state that would determine who might play later this month in an All Star game featuring the best players from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Alvarado was named MVP of the game played in East Wenatchee on Saturday, when the games were played. Alvarado hit three home runs in his outing to earn top honors.

Those and more absences were a big reason for the team's 12-0 loss to the Heat as the team was missing a large number of regulars and played with only three starters.

"The Heat is a good team and have a lot of junior college guys," Boruff said.

Josh Snider (Ephrata) led the team with three hits.

The RiverDogs advanced to the semifinals with a 9-1 win over Seattle Select in their final game on Saturday, to finish second in their pool.

Davis Engel (Skagit Valley CC) pitched a complete game with eight strikeouts to earn the win.

Snider and Alvarado each had two hits to lead the way offensively.

"I am certainly seeing better hitting discipline in three or four guys," Boruff said. "You don't see it all at once. Your goal is to have seven to eight guys who are together at the end of the year."

So with a 4-1 weekend the RiverDogs continue to march forward and in doing so hope to keep fine tuning their roster.

"We just have develop our number three-five pitchers," Boruff said. "Yada, Snider, Cody Johns, Valdez and Seth Darling are going to compete for those rotation spots. We have two top pitchers in Stockton Taylor and Davis Engel. We just need the other three spots in the rotation to keep improving."