Hawaiian Electric Game of the Week
Wong, Crusaders cool off red-hot Warriors, 6-2


  



Sat, Mar 18, 2017 @ [ 3:00 pm ]


FINAL 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 R H E
Saint Louis 0 302010671
Kamehameha 1 0 00010281

W: Chase Meilleur    L: Christian DeJesus    SV: Dawson Yamaguchi

KSK: Kawaiola Takemura 3-3 run dbl trp; Jace Borja 3.0 IP 2 ER
STL: Matthew Wong 2-3 3 rbi trp; Chase Meilleur 6.0 IP 1 ER


ALA WAI — For the second time this season, Chase Meilleur had Kamehameha's number.

Meilleur allowed two runs over six innings of work and Matthew Wong batted 2 for 3 with three RBI to lead Saint Louis to a 6-2 win over Kamehameha in an Interscholastic League of Honolulu baseball game at Ala Wai Field Saturday afternoon.

The Crusaders, who are ranked No. 1 in the ScoringLive/Hawaiian Electric Power Rankings, rallied from an early one-run deficit to snap the third-ranked Warriors' seven-game win streak.

The teams are now tied atop the ILH Division I standings at 7-2.

"Kamehameha has been hitting the ball all over the place and pitching well, (but) it's just hard to maintain that for the whole season, so we're just very happy to get a win," Saint Louis coach George Gusman said.

Meilleur, the Crusaders' right-handed ace, scattered eight hits with one walk and one strikeout in six-plus innings. He got fly-ball outs on 12 of the 28 batters he faced. Meilleur threw 87 pitches in the outing to improve to 3-1, and lowered his ERA to 2.13.

"He's our bulldog," Gusman said of Meilleur, a 5-foot-11 senior. "He'll come after you and that's been Chase; that's who he is. We''re proud of him. He went after guys, they swung at a lot of first pitches and he got a lot of fly balls, so that really helped us."

After allowing a first-inning run, Meilleur settled in and retired 13 of the next 16 batters. He threw first-pitch strikes to 17 hitters and had just three three-ball counts.

"After that run, I wanted to make sure that every other ball after that was playable," Meilleur said. "I know my team is behind me and so I just felt that personally I just needed to get it to my team and my team would have my back."

It was Meilleur's second win over the Warriors in as many tries. He tossed a complete-game four-hitter in Saint Louis' 2-1 win over Kamehameha in both team's season-opener back three weeks ago.

"That helped because I knew who to pitch better toward, but every game is different so you can't go into it expecting exactly what happened last time," Meilleur said.

Kamehameha's 1-0 lead was short-lived as Saint Louis cashed in three runs in the top of the second inning to take the lead for good.

Makana Ontai singled in Charles Lopez to tie it and three batters later DJ Stephens plated two more runs with his two-out, bloop single to short rightfield.

Wong, the Saint Louis clean-up hitter, laced a two-out triple to left-center to score Dylan Pagente and DJ Stephens to extend his team's lead to 5-1 in the top of the fourth.

"I was sitting dead-red fastball, so when I saw it I just swung at it and good thing it went in the gap," said Wong, who was hit by a first-pitch fastball between the shoulder blades in his first at bat and struck out on four pitches in his second.

"I think he needed to settle down and we talked about his approach and just being calm and he knew that he got away from his approach in the second at bat," Gusman said. "When he stays within his approach good stuff happens and I was happy for him."

Wong, who is 4 for 7 in his last two games, saw just seven pitches in his four plate appearances Saturday. He drove in another run with his two-out single in the sixth.

"We knew Kamehameha was going to get off to a good start, so we just needed to play good defense because we were down but we never put our heads down," Wong said. "We knew our offense was going to come. We just had to keep banging the ball. Our motto for hitting is ‘attack right away,' and just be beasts at the plate."

Pagente drew three of Saint Louis' seven walks off Kamehameha pitching and came around to score twice. Hunter Peneueta batted 2 for 4 with a run scored.

Five of the Crusaders' six runs came with two outs.

"I'm proud of our team for their two-out hitting and getting a lot of two-out runs," Meilleur said. "It's always nice getting runs, but as a team I'm just glad that we were hitting the ball today. There were a couple of games that we had our issues, but we're bouncing back and we're playing strong and even better as a team."

Dawson Yamaguchi pitched a scoreless seventh inning to register his first save of the season.

Leadoff batter Kawai Takemura went 3 for 3 with a walk and a run scored to lead Kamehameha offensively.

Takemura singled and came around to score in the bottom of the first. He tripled in the third and doubled in the fifth, but was left stranded on base in both innings.

Dylan Salcedo had the lone RBI for Kamehameha on his sixth-inning, one-out single that scored Athan Kuewa and cut the Crusaders' lead to 6-2.

The Warriors used four pitchers in the loss. Starter Christian DeJesus was charged with three runs on three hits in two-plus innings pitched. He walked three, struck out three and took the loss to drop to 1-1 on the season.

Both of Kamehameha's losses this year have come against Saint Louis.

The game was originally scheduled for a 3 p.m. start, but the first pitch did not come until 4:21 p.m.

Despite the previous game at Ala Wai Field — Punahou-Iolani — running slightly long, the grounds crew lined and dragged the field, and both teams warmed up and were ready to play slightly after 3 p.m. However, only one of the two umpires scheduled for the game was on hand and the game was put on hold until a second arrived about 30 minutes later.

"We were really pumped to play, but once we heard that there would be about a forty-minute wait we were all kind of bummed so it kind of turned the energy down," Wong said.

The final out was recorded at 6:45 p.m. — three minutes after sunset in Honolulu.



Reach Kalani Takase at [email protected].




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