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Gainesville seniors fall in playoffs
As in life, baseball can just be filled with a rough couple of days.The Fairfax Little League Senior All Stars ended the season for their Gainesville District Little League opponents Monday with a 14-2 drubbing that was actually the better of two games for the Gainesville boys.
At least GDLL got on the board then. The day before, it was far worse.
Even without errors or unearned runs Sunday, the Gainesville District baseball team likely would have only been prolonging the inevitable against Lower Loudoun right-hander Ryan Doyle.
The speedballer with a nasty curve threw a no-hitter for LLLL as the GDLL seniors fell by slaughter rule 10-0 after 4.5 innings.
Doyle struck out 11 batters, including all three who came to the plate in the top half of the fifth inning.
"My adrenaline kicked in. I was just like, 'I'm throwing this thing as hard as I can, hoping it lands over the plate.' I was like, 'Got to do it,' you know?" said Doyle.
Local Little League rules state that a team ahead by at least 10 runs through 4.5 innings automatically wins. Only two Gainesville batters reached base all game, and one of those came when starting pitcher Danny Drzal struck out on a dropped third strike but safely ran to first base.
"Well, he had a good curve ball. He threw it past pretty much everyone. And then his fastball was good too. And [when] we got down in the count, no one was hitting his curve ball," said Brendan Pastor, one of Gainesville's three returning all-stars.
"We didn't learn at the plate today. You know, coming back the second and third time, you come back and say, 'Hey, guess what I saw?' We've got to be a learning organization. '
Loudoun catcher Demetri Austin explained that Doyle's off-speed pitches were not just effective, but landed right where he set up.
"His curveball was unbelievable. His curveball, I mean: he hits every spot I put. His fastball, as you saw, got faster and faster toward the end," he said.
The 16-year-old battery mates have known each other since their youth and play together for Dominion High School. Because Battlefield High School manager Matt Caudle asked prospective players to train with the team this summer, Drzal is the only member of the GDLL squad with any varsity experience, unlike the Lower Loudoun team.
Lower Loudoun opted to focus on containing Drzal on the mound and at the plate with the hopes that the pieces would fall into place from there.
And that's what happened.
"Control him [and] we felt that we could win the game because he won the game the last two championships he pitched us," said Austin.
Drzal finished the outing giving one one earned run through three innings but seven unearned runs credited against him due to errors.
Gainesville reliever David Donaldson inherited one runner on base when he went to the mound in the fourth inning, ultimately giving up one base hit, three walks and two earned runs.
"They hit it, but they didn't hit it good. It was pretty much all to us. And little grounders; we just couldn't make a play," said Pastor.
One of the most significant problems for Gainesville turned out to be securing the third out of an inning. In the bottom of the third, leading 4-0 with two outs, Loudoun shortstop Hayden Early hit a grounder to his Gainesville counterpart, but the ball pulled the GDLL first baseman off the bag.
An errant pick-off throw moved Early up to second base and an error at third base on another grounder brought Early home.
The third consecutive error by Gainesville, this time at short, put center-fielder Matt Byrd on first base and a walk to Sam Ryan loaded the bases for the pitcher Doyle.
He helped his own cause with a 1-0 one-hopper to center field that drive in two runs and increased the Loudoun lead to 7-0.
Doyle fought his way out of his only jam pitching in the fourth inning with runners on the corners and no outs when he forced a shallow fly-out to left field, a strike out, and a self-applied tag-out on a dribbler back to the mound.
His strategy at that point just meant "throwing it as hard as I could, basically, trying to hit my spots," said Doyle.
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