听
The Victoria HarbourCats may want to put some doubleheaders on their schedule next season. They seem to like them.
After sweeping their first doubleheader of the season in Klamath Falls this month, the HarbourCats repeated the performance on Saturday at Royal Athletic Park, beating the Walla Walla Sweets 7-6 in the opener and 3-2 in the nightcap in front of 1,877 fans.
The pair of victories improve the HarbourCats鈥� record to 20-21 and moved Victoria to within two games of wild-card leader Corvallis, with 13 games remaining.
After a bizarre finish to Game 1 on Saturday, in which the HarbourCats scored the winning run in the bottom of the seventh on a wild pitch by Sweets pitcher Juan Gamez while attempting to intentionally walk HarbourCats first baseman P.J. Floyd, the two teams played a clean, but not quite as exciting, second game. The HarbourCats jumped out to a 2-0 lead, then rode the strong arms of starter Henry Omana (2-2), Josh Walker and Austin Dondanville to the victory.
鈥淭hat first game set the table for us. We never gave up. We were down 3-0 and showed a lot of fight coming back, and [it] gave us some confidence for the second game,鈥� said HarbourCats head coach Graig Merritt.
鈥淭hat鈥檚 the second time we were down a bunch in a doubleheader and came back to win it, so our guys are staying resilient.
鈥淢aybe a little more rain and some more doubleheaders is what we need. Doubleheaders have been good to us.鈥�
In the nightcap, third baseman Michael Gretler was 1-for-1 with a walk and two RBIs to lead the Victoria offence, while Ben Polshuk was 2-for-3 with a triple.
In the opener, it was the strange finish with Austin Guibor scoring from third on the wild pitch while the Sweets were trying for an intentional walk that stole the show.
鈥淚t was definitely crazy,鈥� Merritt said. 鈥淚鈥檝e seen that before, not to win a game though, so I told our base runner to be ready and he made a heads-up play.鈥�
The two teams will wrap up the three-game set today with a 1 p.m. game.
The HarbourCats then get Monday off before opening a three-game series with the Cowlitz Black Bears on Tuesday night at Royal Athletic Park.
EXTRA BASES: Guibor, out of Fresno State, hit a grand slam in the fifth inning of Game 1 of the double header that gave the HarbourCats a brief lead. It was Guibor鈥檚 third round-tripper of the season. Shawn Kennedy (3-2) got credit for the win, pitching the last two innings and giving up three runs. Starter Jonathan Buckley lasted just one inning, giving up the game鈥檚 first two runs.
