SONOMA, Calif. — The vibes were high on the Walnut Creek Crawdads’ hour-long bus ride up to Sonoma to take on the Stompers. Players were joking with each other and enjoying themselves as they rode a four-game win streak into wine country. When they stepped off the bus, they entered a beautiful Northern California afternoon, the sun was shining and the wind offered a cooling breeze. It seemed like the perfect day. 

The feeling of perfection, however, didn’t last long. After trading the lead back and forth in the early going, a solo shot put the Stompers ahead 5-4 in the fifth inning. Given the Crawdads’ level of play in recent days and how many innings were left, it seemed like the team could very likely fight back. Five more runs given up, two ejections and countless missed opportunities later, though, the Crawdads left Sonoma angry and with a loss. 

Walnut Creek (12-6) ended up falling 10-5 to Sonoma (13-9) Saturday night at Arnold Field, snapping their win streak and evening the series at two wins apiece.

Here are three takeaways from the Crawdads’ loss. 

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

The Crawdads loaded the bases on four separate occasions against the Stompers, putting themselves in great positions to tack massive run totals onto the board. Yet, the Crawdads were only able to take advantage of the bases loaded situations twice, and scored just five runs following three men getting on base. 

Initially, Walnut Creek did well to take advantage of opportunities. Two singles — one of the infield variety — and a walk kicked off a two-out rally in the second inning. From there, a walk, a single and an E5 scored Walnut Creek four runs. The team was capitalizing on mistakes and creating success. 

An even bigger inning was squandered when right fielder Ryan Brome was thrown out trying to score from second base on a single to left field. Still, the team had taken a 4-2 lead and it looked like it could be an evening that would see many Crawdads cross the plate. 

That version of reality never came. 

The Crawdads would only score one more run following three more bases-loaded situations. Even when the bases weren’t loaded and the lineup had chances to take advantage of runners in scoring position, they couldn’t. The lineup had no problem getting runners on base, with 22 total reaching on a combination of hits, free passes and errors, but they just couldn’t make it all the way around the base paths before three outs were recorded. 

In the end, a whopping 17 runners were left on base, the team’s highest mark of the season. The previous high was 14, but that came in the team’s 24-0 onslaught against the San Francisco Seagulls on June 10. 

The Crawdads haven’t been a team that’s wasted too many opportunities over the course of the summer, making Saturday’s game more likely than not a one-off, even if it was an exceptionally frustrating one.  

MISTAKES CONTINUED

Prior to facing Sonoma, Walnut Creek had gone 25 frames without committing an error. The team is one of the best defensively in the CCL, and rarely makes things easy for its opponents. For whatever reason, Saturday was different.

In the first inning, Stompers right fielder Brady Shannon hit a single to his counterpart, Brome. Brome charged the single to field it — likely to try and throw out shortstop Colton Boardman, who scored from second — but the ball went under his glove, allowing Shannon to end up at third. A subsequent wild pitch scored the right fielder, and the Crawdads’ first self-inflicted wound of the day had come back to bite them. 

Walnut Creek’s second error of the day, a grounder to third base that Nico DeFazio couldn’t handle after a late, high bounce, didn’t cause any damage besides forcing right-handed reliever Carson Timothy to throw more pitches. 

In the seventh inning, a play that wasn’t an error, but a defensive mistake, did make things worse for the Crawdads. Stompers catcher Esteban Sepulveda hit a high fly ball to right field that Brome lost track of. The ball fell to the left of him and in for a single.

It was an understandable play, given that the sun had set and darkness had taken over Arnold Field. While the stadium does have lights, they’re not exactly what you would consider MLB, or even NCAA DI quality. Still, understandable or not, the catchable base hit came back to bite the Crawdads. The runner on first base ended up on third and scored on a fielder’s choice. Sepulveda was out on that play, but the runner who replaced him at first scored on a double later in the inning. 

The pitching staff didn’t do themselves any favors against the Stompers, either, allowing seven free passes for the second game in a row. Those mistakes, in particular, were costly. Five of the seven free passes came around to score, representing half of the Stompers’ 10 runs. If the pitching had been able to locate better, the game could’ve been much closer. 

Still, credit where credit is due, Sonoma took advantage of the situations they found themselves in, something that the Crawdads couldn’t do. They saw the Crawdads’ pitchers well, recording 10 hits, four of which were for extra bases.

Walnut Creek has the ability to not give out free passes, but they’ll need to do it at a more consistent rate if they want to go far this year.

TEMPERS FLARING

Emotions got elevated at Arnold field, but not between the two teams. It was the umpiring group that was at the center of controversy. 

Both teams had issues during the game with the umpiring, and it wasn’t for the first time when these squads have met. In their previous meeting at Arnold field on Wednesday, questionable calls in the field drew the ire of Crawdads head coach Brant Cummings and Stompers field manager Zack Pace. On Saturday, the issues were at home plate. 

It all started when a ground ball off the bat of Stompers left fielder Nick Sebastiani screamed down the third base line in the bottom of the fourth inning. The home team thought that it was a fair ball that hit off the back of the third base bag, but the home plate umpire disagreed, calling it foul. Pace came out to chat with the umpire, but ultimately, nothing changed. 

After Pace started walking back to his dugout, a familiar string of words for baseball was heard. The famous “You’re killing me, Smalls!” line from the even more classic 1993 film “The Sandlot” jumped out of the loudspeakers, and just as quickly as the soundbite came and went, the home plate umpire motioned up toward the Stompers’ press box to eject the operator of the soundboard. 

Unlike the fans in the stands, the umpire wasn’t in a joking mood, and he seemed to carry the anger with him for the rest of the game. Crawdads left fielder Casey Leavitt-McGee experienced it firsthand in the next half inning. The umpire glared at Leavitt-McGee when he took, what he deemed, too long to enter the left-handed batter’s box. While it was a relatively small moment, the feud carried into the eighth inning. 

Leavitt-McGee got rung up on a borderline call on the outer third. He thought he had drawn ball four and a walk, but instead had to head the other direction to Walnut Creek’s bench. Right before he got to the dugout, Leavitt-McGee made it clear he disagreed with the call, prompting the home plate umpire to give him a warning. 

That prompted Cummings to stand up for his player, protesting that Leavitt-McGee was just giving his opinion and that a warning wasn’t warranted. The home plate umpire disagreed and ejected Cummings from the game. It was the first time Cummings had ever been ejected from a game. 

The drama didn’t stop there, though, during the next at-bat of the inning, Leavitt-McGee was ejected after words streamed out of the Crawdads’ dugout. The left fielder hopped onto the field, exclaiming that he didn’t say anything and that the words weren’t from him. It didn’t matter, though, the ejection was already made. 

From there, things settled down, but the Crawdads exited Arnold Field with a reason to be upset. They’ll try to channel the anger into a victory over the Seagulls in Sunday’s contest.