NAPAVINE — Things could have gone south quickly for Napavine at home on Monday.
The Tigers had already lost the series opener against Adna on Friday, and the Pirates had plenty of ducks on the pond throughout the first four innings in the finale.
Layton Griffith did his best Harry Houdini impersonation on the mound, though, stranding nine batters on base over those first four frames.
“Those are big innings,” Napavine coach Brian Demarest said. “Anytime you have that much traffic over about four innings, you’re lucky to get out of there without them scoring.”
The Napavine offense gave Griffith some support in the fourth, taking advantage of a slew of Adna errors, and Cal Bullock added a solo home run to help the Tigers pick up a 4-1 win and earn a series split with the Pirates.
“I trust the team,” Griffith said. “I know if I put a ball where they are able to hit it, I trust my team to do stuff behind me. And our bats, we were getting hotter at the end of the game, so I trust that we were gonna come back and hit.”
Griffith wasn’t at his best on the bump, as he allowed six hits, walked six others, and only struck out one, but he drew weak contact when he needed to.
In the first inning, the Pirates had two runners in scoring position with just one out, but a lineout and flyout ended the threat. One inning later, the first two Pirates to step to the plate got on, and the bases were eventually loaded, but a groundout to second ended that inning.
In the third, it was another soft ground ball with the bases loaded, and in the fourth, Carter Edmonds made a tough catch on a looping fly ball to right and doubled off the runner at first.
“Defensively, we’re pretty strong,” Demarest said. “I like our defense when (Griffith) is pitching. That’s one of the reasons he’s our dude.”
One of the main reasons that Griffith was able to keep the Adna lineup off balance was because he debuted a knuckleball.
Griffith said he’s been struggling with his changeup recently, and after using San Diego Padres pitcher Matt Waldron in MLB The Show, he decided to tinker with the knuckleball for the first time since Little League.
“It felt pretty solid,” the sophomore right-hander said. “I got a couple of people to roll over on it, and it didn’t seem too wild.”
Through the first three innings, the Tigers didn’t give Griffith any run support, but they broke through with three in the fourth.
In that frame, the Pirates committed four errors, including two on attempted backpicks.
“We strive to put pressure on the other guys,” Demarest said. “For the last two games with these guys, we haven’t been able to do that … Today, we were able to get some leadoff guys on, and we had guys in the right place behind them. We could do some bunting, we could do some stealing, and it worked out well.”
Bullock added an insurance run in the fifth with a home run on a line drive to left, and though the Pirates got on the board in the sixth, the potential tying run never reached base.
Brody Richards pitched the first four innings for Adna, allowing two hits and three runs, though all three were unearned. Eli Sliva pitched the final two frames.
After Griffith pitched five and two-thirds, Bullock recorded the final four outs, walking just one batter in the process.
With the win, Napavine (16-2) and Adna (15-2) are now both 12-2 in C2BL play and are tied for first, one game ahead of Toledo and a game and a half up on Toutle Lake.
In their final league series, Adna will face Toledo and Napavine will take on Onalaska.
If the two teams finish as the top two teams in the league, they’ll both earn a first-round bye in the district tournament. The goal, for both teams, though, is to get back to the state tournament.
Adna has made it to at least the state quarterfinals in each of the last three seasons, but Napavine hasn’t advanced past the quarters since 2017, including a first-round exit last spring.
“We want to get back to that game,” Griffith said. “That’s been the goal for the whole team. These past couple years, we’ve had all the guys to do it, we just haven’t been able to do it. Hopefully we can this year.”
