Solano College had a chance to do something no other Bay Valley Conference baseball team had done this season — win a series against Marin.
But instead, the Falcons surrendered 12 runs in the final three innings and suffered a 16-9 loss to the Mariners on Friday afternoon.
“For all the teams in the hunt right now, the guys who they have in their bullpens who haven’t been pitching need to step up,” Solano head coach Scott Stover said. “The ones that step up, the teams will dance, the ones that don’t, they’ll be on the back end.”
Solano now sits at 7-11 in the BVC, tied for fifth with Mendocino and a game behind fourth-place Napa Valley with three games remaining. The Falcons will face Napa Valley in the final series of the season, which begins on Tuesday.
“It’s not a real rivalry but it’s nice to win the last series of the year,” Stover said. “That’s the goal and I think every team is trying to do that.”
Marin scored half of its runs during an eighth-inning explosion consisting of five hits and five walks against four different Solano pitchers.
Solano’s Grant Genter gave up a two-run shot to open the frame, but bounced back to record two outs. With one runner on, Stover replaced Genter with Mark Graham, looking for a favorable matchup against Wyatt Davis.
Then the wheels came off for the Falcons.
Davis smacked the first pitch he saw for an RBI double, and after back-to-back walks, Caden Sta Maria lined a two-run single to right-center, giving the Mariners a 10-9 lead.
Marin added three more runs and rode its red-hot bats to the ninth inning, where Sta Maria and Logan Fiene hit back-to-back home runs, putting the finishing touches on the victory.
“When you get to the third game and we have the back-to-back Thursday-Friday, both teams are having to use guys in their bullpen they haven’t used that much.” Stover said.
While Solano’s bullpen struggled, starting pitcher Tyler Chalk had an impressive outing against the top-seeded Mariners.
After allowing four runs in the second, Chalk pitched four straight scoreless innings. Chalk struck out six batters while allowing eight hits in six innings.
“He came back, stretched out and got his six good innings,” Stover said. “We thought about running him out there for the seventh, he was at 92 pitches, and freshmen just aren’t used to it, so we went to the bullpen and we knew it was gonna be a struggle.”
The eighth-inning implosion dampened what had been a good day for Michael Rivera, who went 3-for-5 with four RBI.
Rivera came through with two outs and the bases loaded in both the fourth and fifth, delivering a two-run single each time.
“I was going up there looking for a fastball and then he threw me two breakers to go down 0-2, so I was like ‘I can’t let a ball get past me,’” Rivera said. “He hung it, and I hit it.”
Rivera helped the Falcons take a 9-4 lead at the end of the fifth, but Solano’s inability to add to its run total and its bullpen struggles resulted in the collapse.
“One thing about this week is we had three good starts,” Stover said. “We got them stretched out, but we just need to get guys healthy in the bullpen.”
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