Ready for Action: Centralia, Adna, Toledo Prepped for State Baseball

The playoffs are all about who gets hot at the right time.

The regular season? Just a tryout to get to the playoffs. The district tournament? Just a few games to get ready for the two-game, do-or-die regionals.

Centralia, Toledo and Adna proved that over the weekend. Centralia will be in Yakima on Friday for the State 2A championships, while Adna and Toledo, coincidentally, will be in Centralia for the State 2B championships.

Centralia

It’s been an up-and-down season for the Tigers (17-7), who face Liberty (out of Issaquah), at 7 p.m. on Friday night in the State 2A semifinals at Yakima’s County Stadium.

Centralia went 6-3 in the Evergreen 2A Conference, winning the league championship by virtue of a head-to-head tiebreaker with Tumwater; the Tigers also lost one game to every team in the league, made it through the regular season without a winning streak of more than three games, and were held without a hit for the first five innings of an 8-5 loss to Tumwater in the District 4 championship game.

Centralia’s also been without a variety of starters at various points in the season, thanks to injuries and ineligibilities.

“It’s been a long year, to say the least, with some of the adversity we’ve had,” Tiger coach Rex Ashmore said. “To see us sticking together and finding a way to get out, I always thought this team, at the beginning of the year, on paper, had a chance to do this.”

Making it to Yakima meant beating Archbishop Murphy, 6-5, in Saturday’s regional opener at Franklin Pierce High School, and then upsetting No. 2-ranked, 23-2 Fife, 10-4, in the regional championship.

“It was very exciting and great for the kids to know that if you battle through adversity, and get through things, you can still have a reward at the end,” Ashmore said.

That reward will be a state semifinal against Liberty, which enters the final four with a less-than-eye-popping record of 12-14.

The Patriots shut out Tumwater, 3-0, and knocked off North Kitsap, 4-3, in the regional finals last weekend at, coincidentally, Ed Wheeler Field. Three of Liberty’s runs came in the bottom of the seventh inning; the frame started with two hit batters, and a singles from Torey Anderson loaded the bags before a 2-run single from Tyler Haselman tied things up. An error then brought in the game-winning run.

“Every report we’ve got is that they are playing pretty good baseball right now, and that’s all that matters at the end,” Ashmore said.

The Patriots top two pitchers are also their best hitters. Sophomore Torey Anderson leads Liberty at the plate with a .357 batting average, and pitched 48 innings with a 2.04 ERA and 46 strikeouts and 27 walks this season, and senior Nate Steffens is hitting .306 with a 1.93 ERA and 63 strikeouts in 61 ⅔ innings, with 27 walks.

Centralia, meanwhile, has been led by pitcher Christian Peters, who has hit .458 with 17 RBIs and has gone 5-2 with a 3.73 ERA.

Senior first baseman-infielder Drew Fagerness is hitting .426 on the season with 19 RBIs and a 1.24 ERA in 11 ⅓ innings of work on the mound, while leadoff hitter and center fielder Gavin Kerner has hit .386 with 13 RBIs, 11 stolen bases and two homers.

Catcher Jake Monohon is hitting .327 with 16 RBIs, and shortstop Nolan Wasson is hitting .343 with 19 RBIs and six doubles.

Jake Sutton has hit .326 with 17 RBIs and has been at the top of the Tigers’ pitching rotation, with Peters, with a 2.17 ERA in 51 ⅔ innings.

“I know we’ve got two kids that have started for us most of the year, and one of those two is going (on Friday),” Ashmore said, of Sutton and Peters. “Whatever we have to get past the first one, and find a way to try to get the second one.”

Adna

The Pirates put it all together on Saturday to beat La Conner, 7-5, and Napavine, 6-1, in the Anacortes bracket of the 2B regional playoffs.

Their reward? A semifinal date with perennial powerhouse DeSales, the same team that beat Adna in last year’s semifinals, 13-0, and the 2013 state championship game, 5-0.

“I think our kids are happy to be there. We don’t care who we play at this point,” second-year Adna coach Jon Rooklidge said. “Obviously their program, and what they’ve done, speaks for itself. They’re the odds-on favorite every year, but I feel like we’re in a better position to battle them this year than we were last year.”

A big part of that has been Spencer Burdick, a right-handed pitcher and the ace of Adna’s staff. The sophomore has posted a 9-1 record on the mound, with his only loss coming way back on March 19 in the team’s season opener against Napavine.

“The key for him is he hasn’t walked a lot of hitters, and he’s made people beat him,” Rooklidge said. “He’s good enough that that’s difficult to do. Really, I think that’s the key to pitching at any level.”

Burdick has a 1.30 ERA and a whopping 105 strikeouts in 69 innings this year, with only 21 walks.

“He doesn’t throw a lot of pitches. In most of his starts he’s 80 pitches, and he’s been over that just a couple of times,” Rooklidge said. “Last year, as a freshman, he walked a lot of guys and hit guys, and he’s just had way more success. He’s done well.”

Burdick pitched all seven innings of the regional win over Napavine, after making two separate relief appearances for a total of 2 ⅓ innings in the win over La Conner.

Wes Wilson has been the Pirates No. 2 starter of late, with a 3-1 record and a 2.91 ERA.

“He just throws strikes, and makes people hit it,” Rooklidge said. “He’s just been very consistent.”

The main change for the Pirates, who finished tied with Pe Ell-Willapa Valley for third in the Central 2B League and finished fourth in the District 4 tournament, has been their work at the plate — particularly in their limiting of strikeouts and fly-ball outs.

“We’ve cleaned up our defense a little bit, and we’ve done a better job of putting it in play,” Rooklidge said. “That seems to be our key, defense and avoiding the strikeout and fly ball.”

Burdick has also been the Pirates’ leader at the plate, with a .500 batting average, 34 RBIs, 15 doubles and five triples.

David Young has hit .418 with 17 RBIs and seven doubles, though he played in just 10 league games. Isaac Ingle carries a .360 batting average with 25 RBIs, and Marcus Hampton — who homered in the regional finals — is hitting .343 with 20 RBIs.

“We just have a bunch of guys that, you know what, they don’t hurt us,” Rooklidge added. “Nolan Balzer, Tyson Gray, Wes Wilson, Bryce McCloskey — they all do some good things. They run, steal bases, and just kind of battle.”

They’ll be ready to battle against DeSales — winner of the last three State 2B championships, and 11 titles since 2000 — at 4 p.m. on Friday at Centralia’s Ed Wheeler Field. The Irish enter the game with a 16-4 record, after beating Warden, 3-0, and Brewster, 4-2, in regionals, with the latter game called in the sixth inning due to lightning and rain.

Cam Richman, who started for DeSales against Napavine in last year’s state championship game and against Adna in the 2013 state championship game, struck out nine with two hits and a walk in the win over Warden.

“I would say that to beat anybody of that caliber, you have to play darn near perfect, and we had to do that to get here and we did, so that’s just a great challenge,” Rooklidge said. “If you want to be the best, you’ve got to beat the best, and they’re there.”

Toledo

The Indians are two games away from history.

Toledo’s played in the final four three times, with a third-place finish in both 2001 and 1998, and a second-place finish — to Ephrata — in 1985.

That, of course, could all change this weekend.

Toledo takes on Colfax in the State 2B semifinals at 7 p.m. on Friday night at Centralia’s Ed Wheeler Field.

Colfax is making its first final four appearance since 2010, when it lost to Seattle Lutheran in the championship game. This year’s Bulldog squad heads to Centralia with a 24-1 record, the lone blemish upon which was a 5-3 loss to DeSales on May 11 in the District 7/9 semifinals. Irish ace Cam Richman struck out 11 and held Colfax to just one hit in the win, while Colfax’s Garrett Burke — the Northeast 2B League MVP — struck out seven.

Colfax went on to beat Wilbur-Creston, 12-2; Okanogan, 4-1; and Asotin, 6-5, to reach the final four.

Toledo, meanwhile, finished second in the Central 2B League, took third in the District 4 tournament and knocked off Wilbur-Creston and avenged an 11-inning district-tournament loss to Pe Ell-Willapa Valley in the regional finals to make the final four.

Junior righthander Wes Kuzminsky has been the ace of the Indians’ staff, starting 18 games with an 11-3 record and 73 ⅔ innings pitched. He’s posted an 11-3 record with a 1.05 ERA and 71 strikeouts with just 20 walks.

For most of the season, Toledo coach Jeff Davis started Kuzminsky and brought in a combination of Connor Vermilyea (2.40 ERA), Dakota Robins (3.92 ERA) and Dalton Yoder (1.50 ERA) to close out games, readying the staff for regionals by using a pitch-by-committee approach. The tactic paid off; Kuzminsky started both of Toledo’s regional games, throwing three innings to get the win over Wilbur-Creston, and working six impressive innings (six hits, six strikeouts, one walk) to beat PWV in the regional finals.

Grant McEwen, a senior playing his first year of varsity baseball, leads the Indians with a .494 batting average, 10 doubles and 28 RBIs. Kuzminsky, who plays shortstop when he’s not pitching, is hitting .391 with 25 RBIs, while Austin Eaton has driven in 28 runs and carries a .364 average.

Dakota Robins is hitting .361 with a lofty .518 on-base percentage, thanks to a team-high 18 walks, and Kolton Korpi and Dalton Yoder are each hitting .313.

Toledo and Colfax face off at 7 p.m. Friday night at Centralia’s Ed Wheeler Field.

Note: The losers of Friday’s semifinals will play for third and fourth place at 10 a.m. Saturday morning, while the winners play for the state championship at 1 p.m. Saturday afternoon. All State 2B games will be played at Ed Wheeler Field.