KING CITY — Wins in the final week of play earned the King City Mustang baseball team a #12 seed in the Central Coast Section Division II playoffs that begin today. The Mustangs will start the playoffs on the road in a 3:30 p.m. game with the host Gilroy High Mustangs. Gilroy earned the #4 seed in the division.
King City ended Mission Trail Athletic League play with wins over Carmel last Thursday and a win over the MTAL champion Soledad Aztecs.
The Mustangs played Carmel in a home and away series and won the first game of the series 4-3 and lost the road game by the same 4-3 score. King City had to make up a game that was suspended due to darkness with the Aztecs, and won in the ninth at home, 3-2.
“We played a good game in game one with Carmel,” said Coach Lorenzo Espino. “The game had timely hitting and good defense and pitching. Clay Barbree pitched four solid innings then Esteban Siordia came in and threw three no-hit innings. Game two was another well-played game and our pitcher Brian Lopez threw well but in the end we gave up a two-run homerun in the bottom of the seventh.”
In the win over Carmel, John Serrano had three hits and Barbree, Jeovani Santoyo, and Julian Lopez had runs batted in. Siordia earned the pitching victory in relief. In the lost at Carmel, Tommy Stephens and Jose Arreola had basehits and scored runs and Cedrick Perez had an RBI.
“On Friday we had to finish the extra-inning game with Soledad and ended up winning 3-2,” Espino said. “Julian Lopez singled in the ninth inning and we bunted him over. After two walks, Cedi Perez hit Lopez in for the walk off win. Winning any baseball game is good but I know we beat a good team and that is always nice. I congratulate Soledad on a great year and it is also nice to have two South County teams at the top of our league. It is kind of sad after all these years that there will be no more MTAL, but we are really excited about the future. These last few years have been really good to South County teams and I know the Peninsula teams aren’t too happy that we can play some good baseball down here. We all have blue collar kids who work hard.”
King City finished the MTAL regular season with a 14-4 record and had a 19-7 overall record.
