Saipan Junior All-Stars advance to Regionals

The Saipan Junior All-Stars made it 3-for-3 against their counterparts from Tinian and advanced to the 2008 Asia-Pacific Junior League Tournament with an 11-0 shutout win yesterday at the Francisco M. Palacios Baseball Field.

The final score, however, was not indicative of the pitching duel that transpired in the first three innings of the championship game.

After crushing Tinian Junior All-Stars, 36-7, in the first two games Saturday, Saipan batters groped for form against Tinian starter Deville Maui, who blanked the usually high-scoring team in the first inning.

Saipan starter Lamarc Iguel was also dominating from the mound, recording three strikeouts in the first inning.

Saipan’s bats finally made some noise in the second when Peter Tenorio scored Harry Nakamura for the championship’s first run.

Tenorio and Rocco Reyes then crossed home plate on a single by Diego Camacho, who in turn scored on a sacrifice fly by McGarrett Duenas.

Despite giving up four plate-crossings, Maui was still in the game and also had some fine moments in the second—he struck out Jesse Yamagishi and ended the inning when he induced Anthony Salas to groundout to shortstop Vicente Cruz.

Tinian, however, needed more than steady pitching as their batters failed time and time again to make contact with the baseball and when they did, their feeble attempts to manufacture runs more often than not were foiled by Saipan’s strong defense.

Saipan tucked in three more runs in the third, fourth, and fifth innings while Tinian batters continued to struggle with the Gordian knot that was Iguel and his equally unhittable reliever Nakamura.

With the score at 7-0, Saipan needed at least three runs in the sixth to end the game via mercy rule—something the team did in victories in Games 1 and 2.

Saipan also didn’t have to face Maui’s heat this time, as he was lifted in favor of Cruz at the start of the fourth inning.

The problem for Tinian was Cruz was not as effective as Maui and it showed big time in the fateful sixth when Saipan scored four runs on two outs.

It started out when Duenas scored on an error by the Tinian shortstop then Anthony Salas and Richard Dela Cruz made it 10-0 on consecutive pass balls. The 11th run was then scored when the catcher failed to handle Cruz’s throw, allowing Nakamura to reach home.

Nakamura himself delivered the coup de grace to Tinian when he shut down their batters in consecutive order in the bottom of the sixth.

He first forced Dennis Borja to ground out to second base then showed his power by striking out Christian Barcinas and Moses Untalan for the final two outs of the district tournament.

Saipan Junior All-Stars manager Vinnie Sablan gave his hat’s off to Tinian for a well-played game that made the host team nervous until the four-run sixth inning.

“Unfortunately my plan for today for us to score a lot of runs didn’t happen. There was not much hitting, especially in the early innings. But we pulled it off and I can’t complain. We ended up scoring 11 runs in game, granted most of it came late in the game but we pulled it all off,” he said.

For his part, Tinian manager Fred Omengkar congratulated Saipan for the win and wished them good luck in the Regionals.

“I thought we did pretty well today. Our starting pitcher was doing fine but they had too solid of a defense and they’re pitcher was also strong. We tried to keep it close but they were just too strong for us. They just have more talent but we did try. Our starting pitcher was okay but our second pitcher forced a lot of plays and tried to pick off a lot runners and that led to a lot of mistakes. Our hope was to extend it to a seventh inning, but we just had too many mistakes in the sixth,” he said.