Maybe Victoria HarbourCats head coach Graig Merritt could apply for a job as a soothsayer once his baseball days are done: He predicted the best-of-three West Coast League North Division playoff series would be tight. Game 1 on Tuesday night was exactly that as the Bells edged the HarbourCats 3-2 before 1,558 fans at Joe Martin Field in Bellingham, Washington.
Victoria starter Austin Dondanville (6-1 with a 1.72 ERA in the regular season) went five complete inning with five hits and two earned runs allowed and three strikeouts and three walks.
Cameron Schneider had a rough outing in relief, allowing two hits, a run charged to him and four walks in 11脷3 innings before being replaced by Greg Casper in the seventh inning. An RBI single by Gunnar Schubert off Casper gave Bellingham the winning run and 3-2 lead.
Schneider was tagged with the loss.
Bellingham starter Jon Olsen from the Pac-12 UCLA Bruins (5-2 with a 2.10 ERA in the regular season) went 71脷3 innings with six hits, two earned runs, three strikeouts and no walks for the tidy and well-managed victory.
Bellingham closer Sam Hellinger from Gonzaga, who led the WCL in regular-season saves with 13, closed the door in the ninth inning. The HarbourCats managed a hit off Hellinger, with a one-out single by P.J. Floyd, but could not push the run across.
Bellingham left 11 runners on base but Victoria could not make the Bells pay for that potentially-fatal statistic. The HarbourCats left four runners stranded.
The Bells took a 2-0 lead on a first-inning RBI single by David Banuelos, a thorn in Victoria鈥檚 side during all seven meetings between the clubs this year, and a second-inning RBI double by Dean Lawson. Victoria tied it in the third inning with a two-run RBI single by Ben Polshuk that scored Jarron Silva and Matt Lautz.
Victoria set the all-time WCL regular-season wins record at 40-14 while Bellingham was 32-22. Despite that, Bellingham is 5-2 against the HarbourCats this year, including the Game 1 victory on Tuesday.
The second game of the series is tonight at 7 p.m. at Royal Athletic Park with Josh Mitchell (7-0 with a 1.86 ERA) to take the mound for the HarbourCats. A third game, if required, would be Thursday evening at Royal Athletic with Will McAffer (6-2 and a 1.98 ERA) starting for Victoria.
The winner of the North Division playoff series will advance to meet the winner of the South Division playoff in the best-of-three WCL final. The South final is between the Corvallis Knights (34-20 in the regular season) and the Yakima Valley Pippins (32-22). Corvallis won Game 1 by a 4-2 count Tuesday in Yakima, Washington.
