WHITTIER \u2013 Visiting Liberty broke a tie with runs in the fifth and seventh innings to knockout La Serna 6-4 in the second round of the CIF Southern Section Division 5 baseball playoffs on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
With the win, Liberty (13-11) will play Elsinore, a 5-3 winner over Bishop Montgomery, in Friday\u2019s quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
The Lancers, who were hoping to get to their second quarterfinal in the last three years, finished 16-13.<\/p>\n
Leading the Lancers was junior third baseman Isaac Lopez Del Haro, who was the only player with multiple hits. He was 3 for 3 with a run scored.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re in a game like this, it\u2019s a dog fight,\u201d Lopez Del Haro said. \u201cBoth teams went back and forth. That\u2019s a great team out there and they got the hits when they needed them. At the end of the day, we didn\u2019t and it will kill you in the long run.\u201d<\/p>\n
Junior shortstop Ryan Barraza had a single and two RBIs and a run scored for La Serna and junior pitcher Gibson Laracuente had a double and scored a run.<\/p>\n
A crucial moment for La Serna came in the fifth inning with the Bison leading, 5-4, and the bases loaded and one out. The final two batters struck out and the Lancers went quietly in the seventh.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m super proud of the guys,\u201d longtime Lancer coach Anthony Gonzales Jr., said. \u201cWe were down pretty much the whole game, and we kept coming back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gonzales, Jr. was referring to the 3-0 lead by the Bison in the first inning. The Lancers rallied to tie the score 4-4 in the fifth inning, but could never surge ahead.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Lopez Del Haro) has been solid for us all year long,\u201d Gonzales, Jr. said. \u201cA couple plays here and there, and you know what, that\u2019s baseball.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leading the way for Liberty was senior catcher Austin Cholodenko, who was 2 for 2 with two scoring fly balls and junior first baseman Alex Arteaga with two hits and two runs scored.<\/p>\n
Liberty opened the game with a three-run first, which were aided by two errors, a run-scoring single by senior third baseman Riley Vogt and a sacrifice fly by Cholodenko.<\/p>\n
The Lancers answered with two runs in the bottom half of the inning, to trail, 3-2.<\/p>\n
La Serna junior centerfielder Adrian Dominguez led off with a single to right. After an out, Laracuente also singled. Two batters later, junior shortstop Ryan Barraza hit a two-run single to right.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe left some runners on but that\u2019s baseball, it happens,\u201d Laracuente said. \u201cI love these boys, and we had a great season, and we fought and stayed in it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a lot of juniors here with only one senior in the starting lineup and we\u2019re going to come back next year and get better and have a great year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Liberty added another run in the third to extend its lead to 4-2, but the Lancers answered the next inning with two runs to tie the score, 4-4.<\/p>\n
Barraza was hit by the pitch to open the inning, which was followed by infield hits by Lopez Del Haro and sophomore right fielder Xavier Becerra to load the bases.<\/p>\n
Single runs came across on an infield out and a scoring fly ball from sophomore left fielder Grady Long.<\/p>\n
The Bison broke the tie in the fifth with a sacrifice fly by Cholodenko, to lead, 5-4.<\/p>\n
The crucial sixth inning for the Lancers came with the bases loaded and one out.<\/p>\n
With one out, Lopez Del Haro collected his third hit, which was followed by a walk to Becerra and a single to left to fill the bases.<\/p>\n
However, Liberty winning pitcher David Kirk struck out the next two batters to end the inning.<\/p>\n
The Bison added an insurance run in the seventh to lead, 6-4.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WHITTIER \u2013 Visiting Liberty broke a tie with runs in the fifth and seventh innings to knockout La…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":30517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2288],"tags":[5,10156,3329,3263,2328,2304,4,2305,2303,185],"class_list":{"0":"post-42882","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb-postseason","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-high-school-all-sports","10":"tag-high-school-baseball","11":"tag-high-school-sports","12":"tag-major-league-baseball-playoffs","13":"tag-major-league-baseball-postseason","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-mlb-playoffs","16":"tag-mlb-postseason","17":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114543892362608220","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}