2B Baseball: Burdick Pitches Pirates to State Title Game

The State 2B final four has, for three years running and the better part of the last two decades, been the DeSales show.

Spencer Burdick, however, stole the Irish’s spotlight on Friday.

Adna’s sophomore ace battled his way through a complete-game effort, and the Pirates attacked early and crushed DeSales 10-1 to reach Saturday’s state championship game.

“Spencer pitched an awesome game. I couldn’t ask for anything more,” Adna catcher Bryce McCloskey said. “He was struggling a little bit the first half of the game, but he picked it up and finished it off, just how we wanted it.”

Struggling was something of a relative term. Burdick pitched all seven innings, allowed seven hits, walked four and struck out 12.

“There’s nothing I couldn’t do for my guys. My guys were behind my back today,” Burdick said. “I was struggling to locate my strikes, and they helped me out a lot, hitting the ball and everything.”

He also worked his way out of a bases-loaded jam in the fourth inning, and nice play on a ground ball to Conner Weed led to a double play that helped Adna wiggle out of a bases-loaded, one-out situation in the fifth.

“I think Spencer showed a lot of character,” Adna coach Jon Rooklidge said. “He battled. He probably didn’t have his best stuff, but when you can beat a storied program like that with maybe your secondary stuff, that’s good.”

Burdick also had the benefit of pitching with a comfortable lead throughout the game. Adna came out swinging, with McCloskey and David Young hitting back-to-back doubles to start the game and put Adna up 1-0 nearly immediately. Burdick and Wes Wilson added RBI singles, and Tyson Gray knocked an RBI double in the first inning to give the Pirates a 5-0 cushion before DeSales’ first at-bat.

The Irish opted to start right-hander Conner Richard and save ace Cam Richman — the starting pitcher against Napavine in last year’s state championship game, and the starting pitcher against Adna in the 2013 state championship game — for Saturday.

“We started out expecting their No. 1, and we didn’t get him. We were all ready for that,” McCloskey said. “When they brought in that slower pitcher we were all ready to tee off on him, so we were prepared.”

Richard settled in after the first inning and held Adna hitless over the second, third, fourth and fifth frames. Burdick hit another RBI single in the sixth inning, pushing the lead to 6-1.

DeSales finally strung together two hits in the sixth inning to plate its only run — just the second time all season the Irish were held to a single run.

DeSales brought in reliever Ty Jacobson in the seventh, and Adna added three more hits — with RBI singles from Burdick and Jordan Richardson — to go along with three errors that scored a trio of two-out runs and officially turned the game into a rout.

The win avenged a 13-0 loss to DeSales in last year’s state semifinals, and a 5-0 loss in the 2013 state championship game.

“It’s definitely sweet, since we’ve been taken out and they’ve won it the last three years,” Burdick said. “It’s nice to get that win, finally.”

McCloskey was a freshman on the 2013 team.

“It feels awesome,” he said. “We’ve been waiting three years for this.”

Adna (21-7) has taken an interesting route to the state championship game. The Pirates finished tied for third, with Pe Ell-Willapa Valley, in the Central 2B League, and lost to Toledo in the third/fourth place game of the District 4 tournament.

Adna then beat La Conner and Napavine in regionals to return to Centralia, where it faces Colfax — which beat Toledo, 4-2, on Friday — in the championship game at 1 p.m.

“It’s just a big win, to beat a program like that. Obviously now you’ve got to win another one tomorrow, and so we’re happy to be playing for that,” Rooklidge said. “It’s all about how well you play at the end of the season, and hopefully we have some left for tomorrow.”

Notes: Richman went 3 for 4 with a pair of doubles and an RBI for DeSales. … Burdick was 3 for 5 with 3 RBIs for Adna, while McCloskey and Richardson were each 2 for 3.