5A baseball playoffs: Mountain Vista rides stellar pitching into next round
DENVER — Broomfield pitcher Blake Rohm made one mistake, and Grant Magill was there to take advantage of it.
Mountain Vista will play the winner of Cherry Creek and Rocky Mountain at All-City stadium at 3 p.m. for a birth into the 5A championship game after beating Broomfield 6-4 on Sunday.
“It’s huge. We get an opportunity to play tomorrow and get in the driver’s seat of the state championship,” Mountain Vista Coach Ron Quintana said. “Beating a team like (Broomfield) with the arms that they have, that’s a huge test for our boys and they passed it today.”
Rohm had 3 1-3 no-hit innings. Then, Sam Ireland came to bat and lined one to right field for Mountain Vista’s first hit of the game.
“It opened the doors for us,” Ireland said. “We just took it and ran. The energy totally changed for us and we started to hit the ball.”
No-hitter gone.
Magill, the next batter, sent a two-run homerun over the left field fence and onto the road to give Mountain Vista a 2-0 lead.
Shutout gone.
“I try not to put too much pressure on offense and myself,” Liffrig said. “I go out there and try and give them a chance to win. If I can do that, I feel good about myself. I trust them and I trust that they can score.”
Ireland struck out against Rohm in his first at-bat, but seemed to see the Broomfield right-hander better in his second plate appearance.
Then, Rohm left a pitch up in the zone and Magill turned on it for what proved to be the difference.
“I knew they had arms,” Quintana said. “It was one of those ones where if we got a hit, then everybody takes a deep breath and here we go. We were hitting it, just right at them.”
Cole Blatchford and Ireland broke the game open with back-to-back RBI doubles in the bottom of the sixth. Elisandro Aragon followed suit with an RBI double down the third-base line and Mountain Vista took a 6-1 lead into the seventh.
“That’s clutch. That’s what you need,” Liffrig said. “When you have guys who don’t give up, you know, some teams will stop at two runs. The guys we got, they want to keep scoring.”
“That was huge. We need the momentum,” Quintana said. “In high school baseball, whoever has the big inning usually wins. Putting up those four runs really helped in the end. It gives the boys confidence as well.”
Mountain Vista’s Jack Liffrig would end up needing those insurance runs as he finished off a complete game 6-4 win to move the Golden Eagles into the next round.
“This is something that we’ve known all year,” Liffrig said. “We weren’t ranked in the top 50 at the beginning and we just kind of laughed because we knew who we had and here we are.”
Liffrig stayed low in the zone and got groundball after groundball and double play after double play to keep his pitch count down and his defense in it behind him.
“(Liffrig) has been solid for us all year,” Quintana said. “Normally, if we get a few runs, he steps it up a little bit more and (Ireland) came in — we started him about halfway through the year because we knew we needed three guys for the tournament. He’s been huge for us too.”
In the fifth inning, Broomfield found some life. The middle infield duo of Zach Paschke and Drew Stahl started to turn a potential inning-ending double play, but Stahl threw the ball away and the Eagles scored a run.
After a leadoff single by Ben Peterson in the third inning, a sac bunt moved him to second. On the next play, Drew Stahl’s error at short moved Peterson to third.
Then, a fielders choice loaded the bases for Broomfield with one out as Cole Blatchford dove to tag Peterson, but was not in time.
“Defense, we had a couple errors and that’s not us,” Quintana said. “We rely on our pitching and our defense. We’ll hit. It takes one time to get everybody going.”
Mountain Vista’s Zach Paschke made the second of two spectacular plays on Sunday as he moved to his right and fielded a groundball in hole then flipped it to Stahl to turn an inning-ending double play.
“I just try and let my defense work. In my opinion, I have the best defense in the state,” Liffrig said. “You saw it. Bases loaded, one out, double play. Nothing gets better than that.”
A baserunning error in the top of the fourth cost Broomfield a chance at getting on the board as right fielder Elisandro Aragon caught the runner trying to take third from first on a single.
James Notary led Broomfield over Legend with 11 strikeouts.
Mason Speirs had a line drive homerun to dead center over the 400 sign, then the Eagles capitalized on Legend mistakes to take the lead.
Matt Turner’s RBI triple gave Broomfield enough cushion to move on past Legend.
Mountain Vista rode Sam Ireland in their game against Dakota Ridge. Ireland went 3-for-3 at the plate, including an RBI triple.
“I really just wanted to let my defense do work,” Ireland said. “They’re pretty tough. I just wanted to throw strikes, let the guys hit it and let my defense work.”
Blanchford had a two-run homerun to left field that put Mountain Vista in the lead in the bottom of the first.
