Cardinals' season ends in district baseball play

Cory Wagner’s shoulders and arm were, in the end, just not large enough, or strong enough, to continue carrying his team.

The junior pitched his Medical Lake Cardinals into last week’s 1A district baseball playoffs with a 10-strikeout, three-hit, 3-1 win May 12 over Lakeside. But after that things stalled as the Cardinals lost a May 13 contest at Freeman, 5-0 and 8-4 Saturday to Deer Park to finish their season 9-14.

“That was just a great game, well played,” Cardinals’ head coach Kerry Kelly said. “(It was) definitely a game that shows what we’re capable of.”

However, regular season champion Freeman, (18-3) put their pitching on stage as McKabe Cottrell and Jake Phillips combined to one-hit the Cards in the opening round of the playoffs.

“Freeman, they have a great team, obviously and they do have great pitching,” Kelly said. Wagner got the lone ML hit in the sixth.

While it does not show up in the line score, Medical Lake left a lot of runners on base, most of them courtesy of walks, and had the bases loaded twice. “We had some opportunities,” Kelly said.

Saturday afternoon the Cardinals jumped on Deer Park (15-8) for two runs in both the first and second inning to lead 4-0. But as was the case in a pair of earlier losses, Medical Lake was unable to hold the lead.

The Stags tied it with four runs in the bottom of the fourth and pushed across the winning run in the fifth and three insurance tallies in the sixth.

“We just seemed to lose focus a little bit,” Kelly said referring to costly errors that opened the door. “They just kept battling and battling (and) we just couldn’t close it.”

Brayden Hale had a four-hit day for Medical Lake, which had its chances in the top of the seventh until the defense came through for Deer Park.

“Here we are, we’re down late in that game, we get runners on first and second,” Kelly said. “We hit a line drive, they make that play to keep us from scoring. We hit a ball deep to center, they make the play.”

Against Lakeside (11-9), a team that delivered a pair of one-sided losses to Medical Lake earlier in the season, Wagner was tough. “He’s a competitor, he really dug deep,” Kelly said.

“I’ve been asking him (Wagner) the past couple of weeks — I thought we’ve been playing pretty well even in some of our losses — ‘How are your shoulders Cory,’ because he tried to put this team on his shoulders and carry them,” Kelly said.

Hudson Petek’s two-run single in the top of the sixth with the bases loaded drove home two runs.

With the season complete and no American Legion team formed for the summer in Medical Lake due to lack of players, Kelly said he plans to conduct regular workouts to help players keep their skills sharp. He said there would be controlled scrimmages with teams from Lakeside and Riverside who will also not field summer teams.

Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected].