Alpharetta, BT Join the Hunt for the State Title

publication date: May 5, 2008

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author/source: Tim Altork / STAFF

By Tim Altork / STAFF

Alpharetta head coach Chris McRaney (23) joins the celebration with his team after their 6-3 win over Milton last Friday earned them a playoff bid.

With one week left in the regular season four local teams had three games to prove their state playoff worthiness. Of those four only two earned a spot in the three-week tournament that will determine the best baseball teams in the state. In a day-by-day, blow-by-blow recap of the dramatic final week of the regular season, here’s the story of how they got in.

Monday
6-AAAAA
Roswell entered the week as the team with the longest shot at getting in, and their faint hopes were doused in a heartbreaking 1-0 loss to Chattahoochee. That loss combined with wins by Walton, Alpharetta and Milton to ensure that the Hornets’ four-year streak of making the playoffs would come to an end.

The Hornets went 1-2 in the final week to finish 8-8 in the region, but keeping this team in contention heading into the final week of what would have been a complete rebuilding year for just about anyone else may have been one of the finer achievements of head coach Mike Power’s five-year tenure. His starting rotation consisted of two sophomores and a junior and only three of his starting position players were seniors.

Power is not accustomed to watching the playoffs start without his team in them. In his 18 years as a head coach in Georgia and Alabama this is just the fourth time that his team has not qualified for the state tournament. And with the talent and experience that he’ll have over the next couple of seasons at Roswell he probably won’t have the chance to get used to the view from the sidelines.

But after his team lost to Chattahoochee on Monday, the Hornets were relegated to the role of spoiler heading into Wednesday’s showdown with Alpharetta.

5-AAA
Meanwhile, somewhere inside the perimeter, Blessed Trinity was busy doing some eliminating of their own. They spent Monday evening registering an 8-4 win over Druid Hills, ending the Red Devils’ slim hopes of earning a playoff spot and keeping themselves in position for the coveted number two seed in Region 5.

Matt Skole hit his 14th home run of the season to help shake off the effect of any Titan nerves that may have been frazzled coming into a pressure-packed week. Head coach Andy Harlin did his best to defuse any tension that his team may have been feeling.

“You can’t put pressure on them,” he said. “We tell them, if you want to see pressure go to a cancer ward.”

Alpharetta’s Colin Snow (top) and BT’s Matt Skole played key roles in getting their teams to the postseason.

Roswell’s Zane Evans and Alpharetta’s Zach Garrett locked horns for the first three innings as neither team got a runner past second base. But the bottom of the fourth inning was exhibit A in how the minutiae of the game can have such far-reaching implications toward the ultimate outcome of the game, and hence, the season.

Tommy Butler coaxed a four-pitch walk out of Evans to lead off the inning. Butler is not exactly fleet of foot, so Alpharetta head coach Chris McRaney inserted backup outfielder Cody Smith as a pinch runner. Smith promptly stole second as catcher Ryan Gallardo worked himself into an 0-2 hole.

McRaney called time and invited Gallardo for a friendly visit to the third base coach’s box. Their topic of discussion was simple. With an 0-2 count, should Gallardo bunt in an attempt to put Smith on third base with one out or should he swing away and try to accomplish that same objective with a ground ball to the right side of the infield? But instead of dictating the decision, he put the question to his sophomore catcher.
“Which one do you want to do?” McRaney asked.

“I think I can hit a ball to the right side,” Gallardo responded.

Gallardo was right. He laced the next pitch in between the first and second basemen and into right field for an RBI single. The next batter lined into a double play back to the pitcher that would have ended the inning had Gallardo not reached safely.

“Sometimes you have to let the kids play the game,” McRaney said afterward. “Sometimes I think we can over coach. It was a great at-bat and it was a momentum changer.”

Alpharetta scored two more runs in the sixth, then staved off a Roswell rally to pull out the 3-2 win. The win set up a showdown for all the marbles (the marbles in this case being the fourth playoff spot in Region 6) between Milton and Alpharetta on Friday.

5-AAA
Meanwhile, somewhere inside the perimeter, the BT Titans found themselves trailing North Atlanta 2-1 in the fourth inning of another do-or-die game.

The playoff push is notorious for turning everyday lineup fillers from zeroes into heroes. Francisco Cabrera had a total of 351 major league at-bats in what would have been a relatively anonymous and vanilla career. But he turned himself into a local legend with a timely base hit in the most pressure-packed situation of them all.

So while Skole and Ricky Kleban had been the main power sources for the Titans’ playoff surge (32 home runs, 69 RBI between them coming into Wednesday), it was the light-hitting catcher in the number nine spot in the batting order – the only starter in the lineup hitting below .300 – who rose to the occasion and provided a much needed lift for his listing team.

With one out and two on, Court Kasten drove a 1-1 pitch over the fence for the first home run of his high school career. The Shot That Came Out Of Nowhere put the Titans ahead 4-2 and propelled them to a 6-3 win.

“He picked a hell of a time to hit his first home run,” said BT head coach Andy Harlin.

Anyone who has played the game knows you’re supposed to play it cool in that situation. Act like you’ve been there before. Don’t let the excitement of the moment overcome you. But Kasten hadn’t been there before, and he couldn’t contain his joy.

“When he was coming around, if I had punched him in the face when he ran by me at third base I wouldn’t have knocked that smile off his face,” Harlin said. “He was grinning like the freaking grinch.”

Thursday
6-AAAAA
Milton and Alpharetta went through their final practice of the regular season in preparation for the game that would decide their season. The Eagles were loose but focused as they took infield and went through a brisk round of batting practice.

“Honestly, I’m really trying to just make this another day,” Ray said. “It is a big game, but I’ve told them from day one that every game was the most important game of the year.

“They get tired of hearing me say, ‘All right guys, tomorrow’s the biggest game of the year.’”

Milton beat Alpharetta 5-1 in the first meeting between the two teams, so the Eagles had a sense of confidence about their chances in Friday’s game.

“We know we can beat them,” said Eagles first baseman Chase Davidson. “We know if we play a good game we can easily beat them.”

But centerfielder Lance Martin, who would play a pivotal role in the deciding game, waved off the notion that there would be any trace of overconfidence in his team based on the prior victory.

“Generally speaking there would, but I think with this team there’s not,” he said. “Because we’ve shown throughout the year that we can play with the best of them on any given day, but then we can lose to teams we shouldn’t lose to.”

5-AAA
Meanwhile, somewhere in spitting distance of the perimeter, the Blessed Trinity Titans were busy exacting a little revenge.

They entered Thursday’s season finale needing a win over Riverwood to clinch the No. 2 seed out of Region 5. As you may recall, they entered the season finale against Riverwood last year needing a win to earn the No. 2 seed out of Region 5. The Titans lost that game 7-6 after storming back from a 5-0 deficit.

But revenge was not an overt factor in Harlin’s motivation of his players. He opted for the standard incentive package by relying on the importance of the game and the rewards riding on its outcome to get the juices flowing for his players.

It worked.

The usual suspects, Kleban and Skole, pulled double duty in the home run department and the Titans earned a first-round home playoff series against Gilmer County with an 8-3 win.

Friday
If the Milton Eagles had made the playoffs, Bruce Nyland would have been the Alpharetta Raiders’ version of Bill Buckner. Throwing a baseball into left field to allow the tying run to score when you’re one strike away from securing a playoff berth can have that effect.

Fortunately for the psyche of the senior catcher, the Raiders landed Region 6-AAAAA’s final playoff spot anyway and Nyland was spared the ignominy of his late-inning gaffe.

Alpharetta jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first inning thanks to a two-out RBI double by pitcher Colin Snow. The solid blow to a hanging curve ball was just an overture for the performance that Snow would put together on the mound.

“When I’m pitching, hitting comes second, no questions asked,” said Snow, who plays first base for the Raiders when he’s not on the mound.

He surrendered a leadoff triple to Lance Martin – who scored on Scott Slappey’s sacrifice fly – then proceeded to strike out the next six batters he faced. Eight of the first nine Milton outs were courtesy of Snow’s shopping spree at “K” mart. Snow’s pitching performance followed an intentional pattern.

“Early in the game, the first two innings I’m basically trying to assert myself as someone who makes it hard to be at the plate, so I give 110 percent on every pitch,” he said. “Then I go into cruise mode, trying to get some ground balls and work it around a little bit. Then at the end of the game it’s whatever I’ve got left.”

He entered the bottom of the seventh inning with a 3-1 lead, but from the outset it looked as if what he had left wasn’t going to be enough. Milton pinch hitter Tyler Abbott led off the inning with an infield single and was sacrificed to second by Scott Harbin. Lance Martin kept his night perfect with an RBI single to trim the lead to 3-2. That’s when things took a turn for the surreal.

With two outs and Martin now on second thanks to a walk to Chase Davidson, Snow quickly put Casey Mannion in an 0-2 hole. Desperate to keep the game alive, Martin took off for third on the next pitch, which was called a ball. Nyland came out of his crouch and uncorked a throw that sailed well wide of third baseman Mitchell Newsome and allowed Martin to trot home with the tying run.

It would only be a short reprieve for Milton, however, as Alpharetta pushed three runs across in the top of the ninth to send the Raiders to a 6-3 win and their second straight playoff appearance.

“Most teams with what happened in the bottom of the seventh would have folded the tent. They would have gone in the tank,” McRaney said. “I think it showed great senior leadership and it showed a lot of character in our guys to be able to bounce back from that situation.”
The coach showed as much relief for his catcher as he did for the fact that his season will continue.

“I’m really as happy for him as I am for anybody else because you don’t want to have to live with that,” McRaney said. “Stuff like that sticks with you for a long time if you don’t come back. But the other kids picked him up. There’s nothing to say other than we didn’t go over it, we hadn’t talked about that situation and we have to take responsibility as a coaching staff. I’m just glad it wasn’t the decider.”

For all their troubles and determination the Raiders were rewarded with a first-round playoff series on the road against Brookwood, the state’s top-ranked team. But if they can survive the rigors of the week that got them into the playoffs, then there’s no telling how far they can go now that the playoffs are about to begin.