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STAB pulls away from Trinity

In previous meetings they’ve seen it all. The St. Anne’s-Belfield baseball team had played Trinity Episcopal tight, but had also earned a win by run-rule. Weather finally permitted VISAA quarterfinal match on Thursday, and the playoff contest had a little bit of everything. However, just like the previous encounters, it was the Saints who came out on top as they advanced with an 8-2 victory.

For the first four innings, it was a close battle with Quinn Saunders’ pitching and Brian Yeagle’s hitting providing the Saints a slight 2-0 lead. Yeagle cranked a solo shot in the bottom of the second, and in his next at-bat in the fourth, drove in a run on a single.

“Yeagle probably has the best swing on our team,” said STAB coach Alan Swanson. “Obviously their strategy was to throw a lot of off-speed stuff so you expect Brian to have big at-bats and he did.”

For the first two innings, the Saints found themselves battling back from behind in the count, including Yeagle.

“With two strikes I knew they were probably coming with something off speed,” Yeagle said of his homerun. “I was just trying to wait back and get a piece of bat on it.”

Trouble reared its head for STAB in the top of the fifth as the Titans cut the deficit in half on an RBI double from Jordan Tarsovic. Then a single from Andrew Sarlow looked like it was going to knot the game up but centerfielder Dustin Baellow came up throwing and gunned Tarsovic down at the plate to end the inning.

“The play that turned the game around was (Baellow) in centerfield making a perfect throw when we had an all-conference kid running from second base in Jordan Tarsovic and got him out,” said Trinity coach Sam Mickens.

The play swung all the momentum in the Saints’ favor and they followed up in the bottom of the fifth with a 6-run surge highlighted by a 2-run homer from David Spinosa who returned to the lineup for the first time since a pitch hit him in the face two weeks ago against Flint Hill and left him with a pair of broken cheek bones.

“Spinosa’s a tough kid,” Swanson said. “He went to the doctor and they said he’s fine and has a couple of breaks but he’s tough. Even after he was hit (two weeks ago) he wanted to finish the game. Obviously he couldn’t but he’s been chomping at the bit since then and had some great batting practice.”

That was all the run support STAB needed, and after a solo shot from Berkley Hawkins in the top of the sixth, and a minor threat in the top of the seventh, Saunders shut the door and sent Trinity packing.

“I was trying to work the zone,” Saunders said. “(I was throwing) a lot of curve balls and off-speed stuff to keep them off-balance.”

Saunders struck out 10 batters to pick up the complete game win while also going 1 for 3 with two RBI. Yeagle was 3 for 3 with three RBI and two runs scored. Spinosa was 1 for 3 with two RBI.

Now the Saints head to face Benedictine, the team that ended their season last year. The two square off in Colonial Heights today in the semifinals at 11 a.m. with Spinosa taking the mound for STAB.

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