Baseball ends season against Winter Springs in district finals
photo by Mia Campese
Junior Brayden Toro is pitching against Winter Springs. The team lost 3-2 in the district championship.
The boy’s varsity baseball team lost to Winter Springs 3-2 in the district championship on May 4. It was a pitching duel, as both teams struggled to put runners on. The game was scoreless until the last four innings.
Pitcher Talan Bell pitched five innings, having five strikeouts and only allowing one run.
“I feel good about my pitching, I felt like I did my job and kept us in the game as much as I could,” Bell said.
Winter Springs scored in the top of the fifth, but the team quickly responded by scoring two in the bottom of the sixth. First Base Luis Rivero led the team with two hits, along with Right field Adam Ciccone having two RBI’s, making the score 2-1 as pitcher Brayden Toro stepped in to finish the game.
However, Toro could not stop Winter Springs’ offense, and they scored one run in the top of the seventh, tying the game as they moved into extra innings, and Winter Springs scored the winning run in the eighth inning.
“The biggest challenge of the game for us was stringing hits together and getting them when we needed to,” Bell said. “We could have done a lot better with pitch selection on all counts.”
The team will not move on to the regional tournament, they did not make the tournament, for the first time since 2017.
“I feel like the team deserved a chance in regionals, but ultimately we lost some games we shouldn’t have and that prevented us from moving on,” Toro said.
The team split with Winter Springs earlier in the season, losing to them by extra innings 4-3, and winning 6-2. The execution from the offense lacked for the team, but the defense and pitching staff kept them in the game until the end.
“It is a pretty tough and frustrating loss overall. We had multiple chances to win that game and a few things we didn’t execute cost us,” catcher Bailey Gutierrez said. “We faced a really good arm and he shut us down offensively.”
The team finished with a 19-7 record. The team is graduating a handful of top-tier players and will be looking to rebuild next season.
Your donation will support the student journalists of Hagerty High School. Your contribution helps us publish six issues of the BluePrint and cover our annual website hosting costs. Thank you so much!
