Sequoia baseball shuts down Aragon

The win dented Aragon’s chances of vying for a Peninsula Athletic League Bay Division championship. The Dons sat in second place, one game behind co-leaders Burlingame and Carlmont, who face off this week.

Now, the Dons find themselves in a third-place tie with Sequoia, which has now won three in row in league play.

For Sequoia manager Mike Doyle, it’s not about where his team is in the standings, it’s simply about getting better.

“[The game] was primarily important because we’ve been playing better baseball of late,” Doyle said. “It was important to take that next step of playing well.

“All league games mean the same.”

In a two-game sweep of Menlo-Atherton last week, Sequoia (4-3 PAL Bay, 6-9-1 overall) banged the ball all over the park, scoring 20 runs while giving up 16.

Wednesday, it was the pitching staff’s turn to shoulder some of the load. Lanham and Melz combined to handcuff Aragon (4-3, 13-4).

Lanham got the start and immediately got in trouble. He hit Aragon leadoff hitter Addison Yeh with the first pitch of the game and four pitches later, Ryan Fernandez singled.

But Lanham induced a double play and got a strikeout to end the threat. He then worked the next three innings, allowing just one more hit.

“I don’t think he felt his best,” Doyle said. “I was super proud of the way he competed. He’s that kind of kid.”

Doyle went to Melz to start the fifth and he worked the final three innings without giving up a hit, retiring nine of the 10 batters he faced.

All told, Lanham and Melz combined to throw just 72 pitches.

While Souza tipped his cap to the tandem, he was more frustrated with his team’s inability to put together consistent, quality at-bats.

“[The Sequoia pitchers] did a good job,” Souza said. “But they’re similar to pitchers we’ve seen in the Bay Division.”

The Ravens didn’t exactly knock around Aragon starter Ashton Moniz-Witten. He was just the recipient of some well-placed jam shots as well as some defensive miscues from the Dons.

In the second inning, however, there was nothing cheap about the Ravens’ run. Cole Kenyon led off the inning with a double off the fence in right field. Moniz-Witten got back-to-back strikeouts, but Will Foster beat Moniz-Witten on a 1-0 pitch, smacking a double just over the third-base bag and into left field for an RBI double.

“That first run can be the hardest to score,” Doyle said.

Sequoia tacked on two more runs in the fourth on just one hit, taking advantage of a pair of two Aragon errors. The big hit came off the bat of Logan Mathias, who hit a two-run double to left to push the Ravens’ lead to 3-0.

For Mathias, a freshman catcher, it was the first hit of his varsity career.

“He’s been our everyday catcher for the last month and a half. But we’ve DH’d for him a lot,” Doyle said.

The Ravens ended any hope of an Aragon comeback by scoring three more runs in the top of the sixth, on three hits and an error. Gavin Murphy drove in a run when he was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded. Kevin Furuta drove in a second run with an infield hit and Dillon Goetz rounded out the scoring by driving in a run on a fielder’s choice.

“Winning had become routine (for us). … Until they scored that fourth, fifth and sixth run, I thought we’d come back. It’s what we’ve done all year,” said Souza, whose Dons saw their four-game winning streak snapped. “We roll out two good arms every week. We have to have our best practice of the year [Thursday].

“We’re a hard team to sweep.”

The teams will run it back Wednesday in Redwood City.