Giants baseball rises to top of CVC
By Nick Giannandrea
COS ATHLETICS
College of the Sequoias' baseball team has rushed to the top of the Central Valley Conference.
The Giants went 3-1 last week -- sweeping Taft in a two-game series April 13-14 and splitting a doubleheader with Reedley on April 16 -- to move to a conference-leading 5-1 through two weeks of play in a season delayed and shortened because of Covid-19 safety precautions.
Reedley sits second at 3-1, followed by Fresno City (3-3), Merced (1-3) and Taft (0-4). The conference's five teams will play each other a total of six times before the season ends at the end of May.
Sequoias capped its week with a 13-8 victory over Reedley, breaking the game open with a seven-run seventh inning highlighted by two-run singles from Elijah Cortez (Central High-Fresno) and Payton Allen (Golden West).
Donte Valdez (Redwood), Davis Beavers (Redwood) and Andrew Valdez (El Diamante) also had run-scoring hits for the Giants in the seventh.
The Giants opened with a four-run top first inning behind run-scoring singles from Donte Valdez and Allen, and an RBI double by Flavio Perez Jr. (Hanford), and closed its scoring on Andrew Valdez' run-scoring single in the ninth.
In the first game of the doubleheader at Reedley, Sequoias trailed 4-1 when the Tigers exploded for 10 runs in the bottom of the fifth en route to a 14-3 win.
Donte Valdez' solo home run in the sixth inning was the highlight for the Giants.
Benjamin Pedersen (Tulare Union) had two of Sequoias' eight hits.
Sequoias tallied 22 hits -- including three apiece from Allen, Perez and Donte Valdez.
Allen's run-scoring double and Cortez' RBI single were the big blows in a three-run first that gave the Giants a lead they would not relinquish.
Nate Gilson (El Diamante) and Beavers had run-scoring singles in the sixth as Sequoias stretched its lead to 8-2, and the advantage ballooned to 12-2 in the seventh as Allen added a two-run double and Kade Kiser (Mt. Whitney) and Marciano Corona (McLane-Fresno) had RBI singles.
Allen delivered his fourth RBI of the game in a nine-run eighth inning that also featured a two-run double by Vincent Estrada (Corcoran), a two-run single by Perez, and RBI hits from Kiser, Donte Valdez and James Freisen (Immanuel).
The Giants provided more than enough support for pitchers Noah Munoz (Tulare Wester), Zachariah McCorvey (El Diamante), Anthony Torres (Exeter) and Justin Gonzalez (Dinuba).
Munoz started and allowed one earned run over four innings. McCorvey (2-0) earned the win with three scoreless innings of relief. Torres and Gonzalez finished the game with a scoreless inning each.
Sequoias opened the week with a combined four-hit shutout from Riley Creech (El Diamante), Chance Watson (El Diamante) and Freisen during a 1-0 win at Taft on April 13.
Creech allowed two hits while striking out three in four innings.
Watson was the winning pitcher after allowing two hits and two walks in 3 1/3 innings, while Freisen earned his second save by pitching the final 1 2/3 innings.
It was a scoreless game through seven innings before the Giants broke through in the top of the eighth as Trenton Avitia (Clovis) was hit by a pitch from reliever Genta Yamazaki and gave way for pinch-runner Kiser, who advanced to second on Beavers' sacrifice bunt and scored on Allen's RBI single.
Sequoias returns to action April 20 when it hosts Merced at 2 p.m. The game is set to be live streamed at https://vimeo.com/event/895203.
The Giants will play at Merced at 2 p.m. April 21 in their only other game of the week.
