Baseball: Aliso Bombs Trabuco, Advances to Championship

By the time the top of the seventh inning rolled around and Aliso Niguel came to bat, the outcome was pretty much a forgone conclusion.

By the time the Wolverines finally made three outs, "forgone conclusion" was too tenuous a description.

Aliso Niguel pushed eight runs across the plate and polished off Trabuco Hills, 16-3, in the semifials of the Southern Section Division 2 baseball playoffs Tuesday.

Aliso Niguel (23-11) will play for the championship at Dodger Stadium on Friday, 4:30 p.m. The Wolverines will face secod-seeded Garden Grove Pacifica (28-5), which scored a 2-1 victory over West Covina South Hills (20-8).

This is the first year that Aliso has advanced past the second round of the playoffs. It has won seven games in a row.

Although Sea View League champion Mission Viejo was the top-seeded team in the division, it was second-place Aliso and third-place Trabuco still playing for the title.   

Before the seventh inning, there was still a chance—however slim—that Trabuco Hills could rally. But Pacifica's exclamation point in the top of the inning was the clincher. Only four times this season had Trabuco Hills scored in double figures, and the most they had scored in any one game was 12. 

When they came to bat in the bottom of the seventh, they were down 13.

For Trabuco (17-14), it's already looking forward to next season—only one position player and its No. 1 pitcher are seniors, everyone else among the top 10 players—including its No. 2 pitcher—is a junior or sophomore.

The teams played each other three times in league play; this was the third victory by Aliso. It's the first time the visiting team won, and it couldn't have come at a more significant time for the Wolverines.

"If I can state the obvious, it was their day," said Trabuco coach Michael Burns who guided his team to its deepest run in the playoffs in more than two decades. "They do a great job of getting the extra 90 feet, of moving the runner over, of getting the clutch hit."

Ten batters pounded out 17 hits for Aliso, with three apiece coming from sophomore Anthony Sommer, Mike Hall and winning pitcher Matt Molnar (6-4).

Sommer had a double, scored three runs and had five runs batted in. Hall had two RBIs and scored once, and Molnar had one RBI and scored twice. Sophomore Mitchell Brady had two RBIs and senior Brett Barker scored twice.

Trabuco got 10 hits off Molnar, but after Aliso scored twice in the sixth to extend its lead to 8-3, the Wolverines turned to their best pitcher, Barker, for an inning to ensure there was no momentum shift. 

After scoring eight in the top of the seventh, Barker left—setting him up nicely to pitch the championship—in favor of sophomore Ryan Randel.

The game might have been different had Trabuco summoned a more productive first inning. Spotting Aliso three runs on Sommers' two-run single and Hall's RBI single, the Mustangs scored once on Cole Stanton's RBI, but despite having the bases loaded with only one out, the one run was all they got.

They couldn't keep up after that, though Trevor Peterson—Trabuco's lone senior position player—had a two-run double in the fifth.

"We missed some opportunities early," Burns said. "The game changes if we score there (in the first)."

Instead, Aliso pulled steadily away until the seventh, at which point it simply ran away into school history.