DANVILLE, Calif. — The Walnut Creek Crawdads desperately needed to get things going on Friday against the Philippines Baseball Group. A seven-game winning streak that gave the team a CCL North best 7-1 record was in the rear view mirror after an 8-7 walkoff loss and a 3-0, 2-hit shutout. 

The offensive production had dwindled, but the belief in the team hadn’t. Before the Crawdads left Monte Vista High School following their Thursday loss, Pitching coach Dustin Cheyne told the team to stay positive and not let the two losses turn into three when they returned to the field the next day. The Crawdads took his words to heart and didn’t let him down. 

At first, it looked like it could be a second straight quiet, windy evening for the Crawdads. The offense didn’t break through until the fourth inning, when they got themselves on the board with a modest two-run frame. In the fifth inning, though, not content with the performance so far, the offense exploded, batting around and scoring seven runs, signaling that Walnut Creek had found its stride once more.

“We showed up to handle business today,” Crawdads center fielder Casey Leavitt-McGee said. 

Walnut Creek (8-3) would bat around once more, doing it in a six-run eighth inning, securing a 15-1 victory over the Philippines (1-8). The team was not only able to get the line moving in a way that never happened Thursday, but also made it virtually impossible for the line to stop. The offensive explosion — backed by near lights-out pitching — led to the type of win the team knew it was capable of, emphatically snapping the two-game skid.

“These guys are feeling better about themselves,” Crawdads head coach Brant Cummings said. “This team can hit, it’s just the conditions yesterday weren’t conducive to it. Today (the wind) was still a little bit of a trouble, but we were good with runners in scoring position when we had chances to score guys. I thought that was the difference between yesterday and today.”

Walnut Creek wasted chances with runners in scoring position during the first three innings. Leavit-McGee changed the tide in the fourth. With shortstop Cam Calvillo on third base, Leavitt-McGee hit a fastball that backspun into left-center field, falling in for a double after some miscommunication between PBG’s outfielders. Calvillo came in to tie the game 1-1 and Leavitt-McGee would eventually break the tie, scoring on a balk. 

The double seemed to spark something for Leavitt-McGee. The Cal State Bakersfield commit entered Friday’s action 2-22, and while he had been putting together good at-bats, he wasn’t able to find results until he saw he saw his hit find grass. 

The double kick-started a 3-4, three RBI day for the lefty. He was a major factor in the Crawdads’ fifth inning rally, singling to left field and scoring two runs before scoring himself on a single to the same part of the field off the bat of shortstop Jared Mettam. Leavitt-McGee’s key for his slump-breaking performance was having the right mindset. 

“You just have to remind yourself that it’s baseball,” Leavitt-McGee said. “My old junior college coach said something to me that really rang true. It was: ‘Your worst day on the baseball field is (still) better than when you’re done with baseball and you don’t get to play anymore.’” 

Leavitt-McGee’s three hits tied him with Calvillo for the most on the day. As a unit, the offense combined for 14 hits — and 10 free passes — across eight innings, with the majority of them coming in the two frames where they batted around. The offense keeping its foot on the gas pedal throughout the game lifted their spirits and their chances of walking out of Monte Vista High School with a win with every runner that got on and came across to score. 

“We’ve got to find a way to score every chance we get,” Cummings said. “We never know when it’s going to be 5-2, 3-1, 6-5, we just have to score every opportunity to keep that good feeling going.” 

The Crawdads’ pitching staff was nearly as dominant as the lineup. The only blemish came in the fourth inning when left-hander Sam Polston gave up one run. Right-handed starting pitcher Brady Wilson set the tone early with three strong, scoreless innings. Any time a reliever found himself in some trouble, he was able to get out of it.  

Right-hander Ray Olivas exemplified that more than anyone in the win. The UC Santa Barbara rising sophomore entered the game in the fourth inning with the bases loaded and just one out. Instead of letting the situation get to him, he induced a 5-4-3 double play to get out of the jam. In his subsequent two frames, the righty got two more double plays to kill all PBG threats. 

“Our defense is going to work for us,” Olivas said. “As seen today, they had our backs. Just pound strikes, sometimes they’ll get some contact off you, but it’ll all come back.” 

The Crawdads’ pitching staff has been up and down for most of the season, but the win made it two games in a row where they’ve handed out limited free passes and held their opponents to three runs or less. With the offense seemingly finding its stride again, the Crawdads look more dangerous than ever. 

“(The pitching staff) has done exactly what this (coaching) staff has told them to, to throw strikes,” Cummings said. “If they can throw strikes, then they have a chance to compete and win.”

The goals set out in Cheyne’s Thursday postgame speech were accomplished. The team stayed positive and turned what could’ve been a third straight loss into a win. The victory prompted a different kind of postgame message from the coaching staff, this one coming from assistant coach Derek Nicholson: 

“Two games, that’s the longest losing streak we’re going to have.”