PORT ANGELES — The Wilder Senior Baseball Club qualified for the state American Legion tournament that begins Saturday, scoring lots of runs and splitting four games with Bellingham Post No. 7 this weekend.
Wilder finished its regular season with a 10-0 5-inning win over Bellingham. Landon Seibel cracked the second of two home runs on the day and Wyatt Hall just missed a home run for the second time of the day in a 6-run first inning.
“Wyatt found the barrel a lot,” said coach Zac Moore. Connor Bear pitched the shutout. “Our defense played very well behind him, ” Moore said.
Earlier in the day, Wilder got into a big hole early against Bellingham. They came back twice but lost 11-10. “We were working from behind our first three games [against Bellingham],” Moore said. On Sunday, Wilder beat Bellingham 13-5 but lost the second game 11-8.
Wilder finished 6-10 in Area A and will be a No. 3 seed. Wilder begins postseason play at host Spokane on Saturday.
In the Monday morning game, Bellingham got up 8-3. Wilder rallied to make the score 8-7 in the sixth. After allowing three runs in the bottom of the sixth, they rallied against in the seventh thanks to a 3-run home run by Seibel.
Wilder was hurt by a rough second inning. Seibel pitched effectively for most of the game, but he got touched up in the second inning for five base hits and a walk and gave up six runs. He settled down after that, giving up just two runs in the second through the fourth innings. “We gave up a lot of unearned runs,” Moore said.
Wilder tried to claw back, but left a ton of runners stranded in the fourth and fifth innings. Wilder loaded the bases with no outs in the fourth when two pop ups dropped in and Colton Romero dropped a perfect bunt down the first-base line for a single. But, they were only able to get one run on a Hall RBI sacrifice fly. With the bases still loaded, Seibel hit a hard grounder that could have scored a couple of runs, but it was right at the third basemen, who ran to third to end the inning.
Finally in the sixth, they erupted for four runs. Blake Merideth had a leadoff single, Hall walked and Seibel, who crushed the ball all day long, hit an RBI double. Beckett Jarnagin had an RBI infield single and then Bear hit a seeing-eye single on a grounder that got between Bellingham’s third basemen and shortstop to score two more runs.
Bellingham responded with three runs in its half of the sixth inning. Merideth again started a rally in the seventh inning with another single. Hall hit a towering drive to the wall in deep right center that the Bellingham right fielder couldn’t haul in. It went for a double.
While Hall’s drive missed being a home run by a few feet, Seibel immediately scorched a no-doubter well over the left-center wall to score three runs. A Jarnagin flyout ended the game, however.
Wilder also lost two to Region 1 champion Lakeside Recovery on Saturday, 13-2 and 14-4. Lakeside Recovery went 16-0 in the regular season.
