10 Things To Know | 10th Season: Week of May 13, 2019

High school and collegiate sports seasons are ending one by one.
Before you know it, the Walla Walla Sweets will raise the curtain on their 2019 season. It begins June 4 with Opening Day, starting a three-game series against defending West Coast League champion Corvallis at historic Borleske Stadium. The first six games, in fact, are looking to be very important – with the Bend Elks following after the Knights, the Sweets can set the tone early in the first half South Division race.

If that isn’t enough to get you fired up about Sweets baseball, how about another edition of “10 Things to Know” to get those juices beyond the boiling point?

  1. The Sweets possess more all-time, regular-season wins against the Wenatchee AppleSox – 34 – than any other WCL
    team. Walla Walla has won 20 games or more against five other past or present league members (Kelowna, 28; Bend and
    Kitsap, 23; Cowlitz, 21; and Bellingham, 20).
  2.  Michael Peterson allowed just one earned run over six-and-two-thirds innings and struck out 10 Saturday in Walla Walla Community College’s 11-4 trouncing of Yakima Valley in game one of a Northwest Athletic Conference Eastern Region doubleheader at Warrior Field.
  3. Peterson’s hard-luck teammate, Brayde Hirai, was in line to earn a victory of his own in the nightcap of the twin bill, but a late-inning rally put a damper on that possibility. Hirai exited after giving up a lead-off triple in the eighth inning. WWCC led at the time, 7-3, but went on to lose, 10-8.
  4. Peterson, Hirai, and Sweets teammate Brandon Wagstaff were among 10 Warrior sophomores honored in a between-games ceremony on Saturday.
  5. WWCC finished 2019 with a 15-13 record in league play and 17-25 overall under first-year head coach and former Sweets assistant Justin Speer. Walla Walla went 15-9 in its last 24 games after opening the season with 16 losses in its first 18 games – 14 of which were on the road or at a neutral site. Nine of the Warriors’ losses were by one run and 13 were by two runs or less.
  6. Northwest Nazarene’s season ended last week after two losses in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference tournament at Concordia University in Portland. NNU lost to Western Oregon, 10-2, and St. Martin’s, 3-2.
    Sweets in waiting Ben Johnson and Parker Price hit .364 and .291, respectively, for Northwest Nazarene. Price hit four home runs and drove in 27 tallies.
  7. Jordan Stubbings hit a three-run, first-inning home run May 8 as Colorado Mesa opened Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference tournament play with an 11-4 triumph over CSU-Pueblo in Grand Junction. The Mavericks, now 45-9 on the season, went on to win the program’s six straight RMAC tourney over the weekend. Stubbings is hitting .358 with 13 home runs and 47 RBIs. He has achieved 100 RBIs for his CMU career.
  8. Stubbings future Sweets teammate, Caleb Farmer, has a .315 batting average. He has six long flies and 41 RBIs.
  9. Sweets alum Danny Sinatro went 2-for-4 with an RBI triple and two runs scored May 6 as Washington State upended Gonzaga, 9-5.
  10. DeSales’ campaign ended on Friday with a 5-4 loss to Liberty Bell in the District 5-6 tournament at Wenatchee Recreational Park. Sweets General Manager J.C. Biagi is a DeSales baseball alum and was on the tail end of an Irish run that produced six consecutive Class B state championships from 1992-98.

Danny Sinatro had quite the performance against the Gonzaga Bulldogs this past week.

 

By: Walla Walla Sweets

Date: May 14, 2019