Mavs on to state with 8-2 win over Eastmont

MOSES LAKE – The Mavs are heading back to the 4A State Baseball Tournament, after defeating Eastmont 8-2 on Saturday in Moses Lake to clinch their spot for the fourth-straight tournament.

“Going on to state is absolutely phenomenal,” Moses Lake Head Coach Donnie Lindgren said. “... it’s a tribute to these players. They expect to go to state every year. It’s nothing we do as coaches, it’s the expectations of these players.”

Moses Lake fell to West Valley (Yakima) 4-3 on Friday night on a walk-off in the bottom of the seventh in the Columbia Basin Big-Nine district title game but responded with a strong start against Eastmont on Saturday.

“When these guys walked in today, I knew it was ours,” Lindgren said. “They came in ready to go, they were happy – they’re baseball players. They’re grinders, and when they walked through the gate today I didn’t have a worry.”

Moses Lake took advantage of nine Eastmont errors throughout the game, using them as opportunities to reach extra bases and add runners into scoring position. Junior Nolan Betz scored the first run of the day in the bottom of the first inning.

“(Betz) takes pride in running bases,” Lindgren said. “He got a drag bunt down today. He sets the tempo for us when he gets on base. He’s a great base runner and gives a lot of energy.”

Senior Zane Harden added a run of his own off a wild pitch three pitches later.

“We don’t condition at the end of practice, we run bases at the beginning of practice every single day,” Lindgren said. “We’ve worked on different situations … Our base running is the first thing we do every single day. It showed today.”

While the Mavs were finding success on the base path, the hits to drive in more runs were missing through the first four innings. In the bottom of the fifth, Moses Lake batters recorded five hits in the first five at-bats, which eventually helped build a 7-0 lead. Sophomore Jackson Carlos, junior Jayce Stuart, senior Braeden Anderson and senior Blaine Macdonald all batted in runs during the bottom of the fifth.

“We left, probably, seven or eight guys on (base) in the first four innings, and it was just a matter of time for us to come through,” Lindgren said.

Stuart’s two-RBI single opened up the floodgates in the bottom of the fifth, and the junior later scored on his own later in the inning.

“It’s finally clicking for us as a team,” Stuart said. “All the bats are really coming together in the lineup, we’re hitting the ball, doing our job and getting our bunts down.”

Senior pitcher Michael Getzinger remained on the mound for the full seven innings of Saturday’s win, the first time he’s done that in a high school game. Getzinger surrendered three hits, walked one batter and struck out nine against Eastmont.

“Seven innings is a big job for me, I’ve never done it before in high school but I’m glad that I had the chance to do it,” Getzinger said. “I felt like the most dominant pitcher in the world, I’m not going to lie. Nobody could touch my stuff, and I was ecstatic for our offense making plays and the defense behind me.”

Eastmont added two runs in the top of the sixth, but Getzinger struck out two of his three batters faced in the top of the seventh inning to end the game in a 8-2 Maverick win.

“We played a team game today,” Getzinger said. “Limited mistakes, we did what we had to do to get the job done to win the game. That’s all you can really ask for of your defense and your offense as a pitcher.”

The win snapped a five-game skid for the Mavs, who lost four games in a row to West Valley. After committing 10 errors in last week’s doubleheader against the Rams, Lindgren said the Mavs focused on the simple things during this week’s practices.

“We went back to basics,” Lindgren said. “A lot of ground balls, fundamentals and things like that. It’s been a long year, a grinding year, and we just ended up having a bad week. Errors come one after another, just like runs do. We went back to basics, they bought in and worked their tail off at practice.”

After the game, players and coaches waved to fans and Lindgren was rewarded by players dumping the Powerade water cooler onto their head coach.

“It actually didn’t feel too bad,” Lindgren said with a laugh.

Box Score

ESMT: 0-0-0-0-0-2-0 2

MAVS: 2-0-0-0-5-1-X 8