WHITTIER, Calif. – The Whittier baseball team went to extra innings for the first time this season and let one slip away. Cal Lutheran scored in the top of the 11th inning and put the Poets down in order to steal a 9-8 win Friday afternoon.
Whittier (8-8, 4-6 SCIAC) jumped out to a 6-2 lead following a four-run fifth inning but couldn't hold the lead. The Kingsmen answered with five runs over the next two frames to place the purple and gold in come-from-behind mode.
The Poets tied the score at 7-7 with a run in the bottom of the eighth but again surrendered a run in Cal Lutheran ensuing at bat to face an 8-7 deficit with three outs left in the game. However, Darby Weppner quickly erased the hole as he led off the home half of the ninth with a solo homerun to right centerfield. Weppner's blast sent the game to extra innings.
Neither team was able to score in the tenth frame despite receiving a one-out hit, each, respectively. The Kingsmen left a runner stranded on second after a double and Cory Goodchild was left on the base path after singling to center field.
The Poets were one out away from getting out of the 11th unscathed but an errant throw on a stolen base allowed Cal Lutheran to advance all the way one score the eventual game-winning run.
Whittier committed three errors for the game which resulted in four runs.
The Kingsmen opened the game with a two-run homerun off starting pitcher Keith Hoefel but didn't manage much off the senior hurler for the remainder of the game.
Hoefel went 6.0 innings and allowed five runs (two earned) with five strikeouts. He gave away prior to the start of the seventh inning with a 6-2 lead.
The usually steady arm of Mike Rueda was a little off as he allowed three runs on five hits over 2.1 innings. Taylor Fallon suffered the loss by allowing one unearned run and two hits in 2.2 innings of work.
Alex Gast, Weppner and Reed Tuttle all had three hits on the afternoon while Goodchild, Dan Gleiberman and Sean-Michael Nada had two apiece.
Gast drove in Whittier's first run on a single in the first while a Nada single in the second score Tuttle to tie the score at 2-2.
The Poets' explosive fifth frame started with a one-out, solo, homerun by Gleiberman and was capped by a three-run homerun from Weppner.
Whittier and the Kingsmen will wrap-up their three-game set on Saturday afternoon in Thousand Oaks.