10 Things to Know | 10th Season: Week of 4.29.2019

Lincoln is dealing, Whitman (!!) is winning conference titles, and baseball is nearly back at Borleske for the 2019 season

Five weeks.

That is what is left of this off-season – and they seem to go faster every year.

Another week has passed and we are getting closer to officially beginning the 10th season of Walla Walla Sweets baseball. High school and college sports seasons and school years are winding down. It is against that backdrop that we present this week’s edition of “10 Things to Know”.

  1. Colorado Mesa finds itself one win away from clinching the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference regular-season title. CMU improved to 26-6 in the RMAC and 38-8 overall after sweeping a four-game series against Metro State-Denver over the weekend. Future Sweets Jordan Stubbings and Caleb Farmer are batting .357 and .304, respectively. Stubbings is tied for the team
    lead in home runs (10), and is tops with 44 runs and 39 runs batted in. Farmer has swatted a team-high 14 doubles.
  2. Parker Price threw five innings of one-run, three-hit ball and earned his first win of the season Saturday as Northwest Nazarene clinched a berth in next month’s Great Northwest Athletic Conference tournament with a 5-4 victory over St. Martin’s in the second game of a league doubleheader in Nampa, Idaho. The GNAC tournament is scheduled for May 9-11 at Concordia University in Portland.
  3. The 2019 season has been a tough one for Washington State University. The Cougars have managed just one Pac-12 Conference win and eight overall.
    But a couple of past Sweets have perfomed well on the Palouse. Outfielder Danny Sinatro is batting .288, and pitcher Bryce Moyle is 1-0 and is an eyelash short of a 5-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 18 appearances (19 K’s and 4 BB’s).
  4. Brandon Wagstaff went 3-for-5 with three runs and five RBIs Saturday as Walla Walla Community College outslugged Columbia Basin, 14-13, in the second game of a Northwest Athletic Conference Eastern Region doubleheader in Pasco. The Warriors have won six of their last eight games.
  5. The Whitman College Blues, who, like the Sweets, call Borleske Stadium home, won the school’s first Northwest Conference baseball tournament championship Sunday with a 9-8 victory over Whitworth in Spokane. One reason Whitman is advancing to NCAA Regional tourney play is the effort of former Sweets pitcher Milo Mincin. He’s chalked up seven saves, a 2.35 earned average, and was named to the NWC’s first team on Monday.
  6. Santa Barbara City College standout and Sweet-to-be Patrick Caulfield leads the Vaqueros in batting (.354 avg.), runs (23), hits (46), doubles (13), RBIs (31), slugging percentage (.515) and stolen bases (25).
  7. Borleske Stadium groundskeeper Tim Duncan is in his 28th year at the helm. He has coached varsity girls basketball at DeSales High School for a quarter-century plus, and played both basketball and baseball for the Irish in the mid 1970s.
  8. Former Sweets broadcaster Ben Farber is currently living in New York City coaching varsity baseball and basketball, and teaching P.E., at his alma mater Friends Seminary. He is planning to attend graduate school to pursue a masters degree in journalism next year at either Northeastern University in Boston or the University of Oregon.
  9. Another ex-Sweets voice, Zach Bigley, is curently employed by the Carolina League’s Myrtle Beach Pelicans, the Class A advanced affiliate of the Chicago Cubs, as media relations and broadcast manager.
  10. Former Sweets standout Chris Lincoln (2017, UCSB) has been named a finalist on the Watch List of the NCBWA for best closer in the country. He is likely to be a top draft pick this next month!

Photo Credit: Chris Lincoln | courtesy of Daily Nexus – UCSB

 

By: Walla Walla Sweets

Date: April 30, 2019