By Stompers Staff
A quiet offensive day characterized the 4-0 loss for the Sonoma Stompers this Saturday night against the Walnut Creek Crawdads. With players leaving the team to prepare for their upcoming collegiate seasons, the Sonoma lineup has featured some new faces. The new energy was not enough tonight though, as the Stompers only manufactured four hits.
Stomper's pitching was solid today however, giving up only one earned run. This came from starter Jake Tirk, who despite giving up five walks contained the damage to only one in his three innings of work. Jake Verwil gave up the three other runs, but because of Sonoma’s defensive errors, all three were unearned. The rest of the bullpen tonight, Brent Mallet, Zachary Boorman and Chris Albee held the Crawdads hitless.
No run support came to the pitching staff however. The only bright spot was newcomer but familiar face around Sonoma, Max Handron going 2 for 3 and walking once. He will be a crucial contributor if he stays with the team into a hopeful playoff run. Handron has played in Sonoma his whole life, attending Sonoma Valley High School and recently finished his last year at the college level, playing infield for the Cal Berkeley Golden Bears. Luke Rossi and Jack Vanoncini added the other hits for Sonoma.
The loss moves the Stomps to 15-14 in CCL play, which results in a third place position, 0.5 games back of the San Luis Obispo Blues in second and 5.5 back of the first place Crawdads. The top three teams of each division make the postseason, but Sonoma would rather be a one or two seed so they would not have to play in the wild card. With about one more week of regular season games, the Stompers will look to make one final push, looking to secure a second place spot in the division.
This push continues tomorrow, Sunday at Monte Vista High School, where they will face the Crawdads again, this time as the away team. First pitch is set for 4:00 and the live radio broadcast can be found on our Mixlr: https://sonoma-stompers.mixlr.com/.