Pacifica stumbles in Section 3 Little League All-Star 12s tournament

Trailing by three runs in the top of the sixth, Pacifica sent seven batters to the plate, pushing across their only run of the morning and turning over the batting order to bring slugger Miles Tucker to the plate with the bases loaded and two outs. Tucker battled through an eight-pitch at-bat before San Ramon closer Luke Guevara induced a groundout to shortstop to end it.

“The one thing that we do well is — sometimes it may be late in the game or whatnot — we do manage a way to at least make it competitive,” Pacifica manager Louie Potencion said. “And that’s what they did. I would have loved to have it happen sooner rather than later, but it happened. We had a chance, and that’s all I wanted.”

Pacifica opened the four-team, double-elimination tournament Saturday with a 5-2 win over Niles-Centerville. With Niles-Centerville advancing through the elimination bracket Sunday with an 8-1 win, Pacifica will rematch the Fremont-based squad Monday at 5:30 p.m., with the winner advancing to Tuesday’s championship round.

Pacifica was down one player Sunday after Aiden Fitzpatrick suffered a non-baseball related injury after Saturday’s game. The right-hander pitched 1 2/3 scoreless innings of relief against Niles-Centerville, but was injured later in the day while riding his bike, Potencion said.

“He got in a biking accident,” Potencion said. “He’s fine, but I think he might be out [Monday] as well. ... So, we’re out one of our pitchers.”

San Ramon starting pitcher Mason Hall was nearly perfect through four innings of shutout work Sunday, allowing one hit while striking out five. The hard throwing right-hander surrendered the lone hit when Pacifica’s Mason Agbulos led off the game with a line-drive single to center.

After a wild pitch moved Agbulos to second, Hall went on to set down the next 12 batters in order until turning the ball over to Guevara to start the fifth, keeping his soft pitch count under 50 to allow him to pitch on two days’ rest, making him available if the championship round should advance to an if-necessary game Wednesday.

“The whole team was surprised that they would pull him because he was doing so good,” Pacifica’s Evan Lim said.

Hall’s three-pitch repertoire is challenging enough to combat based on pure stuff alone, but the big right-hander also varies his deliveries to throw off the timing of hitters. His shimmy move, with a dancing leg kick, flaunts a delayed release. It makes it all the more effective when he springs the occasional quick pitch.

“He was definitely funky,” Pacifica’s Chase Tevis said. “Because if he were to quick pitch and slide step, that’s hard to get to because you can’t load or anything. It’s harder to hit.”

With Tucker making his eighth straight start in Pacifica’s eight games this summer, the right-hander worked two-plus innings, getting touched for single runs in the first and third.

He walked Hall to lead off the bottom of the first, and went on to load the bases with no outs, only to limit the damage to one run on an RBI groundout from Camden Purkiss. In the third, Parker Petty led off the inning with a double up the right-center gap to end Tucker’s day with a soft pitch count of 33. Petty later scored on a sacrifice fly by Hall. San Ramon made it 3-0 in the fourth when Camden Kangas singled to lead off the inning, moved to around to third on two passed balls, then scored on a sacrifice fly by Brantley Brazil.

Pacifica turned the tide in the fifth, though. With a San Ramon runner at second with no outs, and right-hander Hunter Potencion making his first pitching appearance of the summer season, Dane Isom hit a line drive that looked ticketed to center field, but Pacifica second baseman Jake Schaible gloved it on the fly and shuffled a throw behind the runner to Tucker the shortstop to get the out call on a bang-bang play for a double play.

“Everyone was pumped,” Lim said. “Everyone was all hyped up because Jake made an awesome play.”

With Pacifica going into its final at-bat trailing 3-0, Tevis opened the frame with a booming fly ball over the left fielder’s head. The left-handed hitter looked as though he’d leg it out for a double, but tripped rounding the bag at first, and settled for a single.

“I had a feeling it was going to be a curveball, and I was just being aggressive,” Tevis said. “And I saw a curveball out of the hand, it was like hanging, and I just barreled it.”

Aiden White followed with a sharp single to center. Then with two outs, and Pacifica at the bottom of its batting order, the No. 11 batter Lim took one for the team, getting hit by a pitch to load the bases.

“I just wanted to hit something, and I just got hit,” Lim said. “And I didn’t even feel it because I had so much adrenaline.”

Agbulos followed with a hit by pitch, forcing home Tevis to cut the San Ramon lead to 3-1. Then Tucker stepped to the plate, only to quickly fall behind in the count 0-2 before fouling off several offerings and running the count full.

“Miles kept battling even till the end,” Lim said. “He gets two strikes and he always just waits until he gets his pitch.”

Guevara won the battle, though, with shortstop Milo Kaiser fielding his fourth grounder of the day to end it.

“That was 1-A, 1-B,” Louie Potencion said of San Ramon’s pitchers Hall and Guevara. “We knew their closer ... as well. So, we knew that he was going to come in with heat. It’s good to know that we can compete with good pitchers.”

Tucker will be unavailable to pitch Monday, as he will be relegated to one day’s rest due to throwing over 20 pitcher Sunday.

“We don’t have Hunter (Potencion) and we don’t have Miles,” Louie Potencion said. “So, it’s all hands on deck.”

In other Section 3 action ...

The Alpine 11-year-olds advanced through the elimination bracket Sunday with a 10-0 win over Fremont-Centerville at Ford Field. Alpine dropped its tourney opener Saturday 12-9 to San Ramon Valley in a wild back-and-forth battle. Alpine faces Castro Valley in an elimination game Monday at 5:30 p.m., with the winner advancing to Tuesday’s championship round against San Ramon.

The San Mateo-American 10-year-olds advanced through the elimination bracket Sunday with a 13-0 win over San Lorenzo at Marshall Park in Fremont. American fell to the elimination bracket with a 3-2 loss Saturday to Fremont-Centerville. The two teams rematch Monday in an elimination game at 5:30 p.m., with the winner moving on to face Danville in the championship round.