DANVILLE, Calif. — For as good as the Walnut Creek Crawdads’ start to the season has been, it’s been mired with inconsistency. While some days are filled with pure dominance, others are filled with multi-inning spans where the lineup can’t buy a hit and stretches where pitchers can’t throw strikes. On days when the stars don’t align for the Crawdads, things can get ugly real quick.

Walnut Creek looked to be on the precipice of an upwards swing following their 15-1 Friday win over the Philippines Baseball Group. The win ended a short, yet painful, two-game skid where the team floundered on both sides of the ball. Unfortunately for the Crawdads, the struggles reared their ugly head, stopping the winning ways before they could even truly begin. 

A beautiful, mid 70s Saturday afternoon at Monte Vista High School — free from the wind that made it a fly balls worst nightmare the previous two games — turned into a day akin to “Dante’s Inferno” for Walnut Creek (8-4), as they fell to the Arroyo Seco Saints (7-4), 16-4. A disastrous 10-run second inning sucked the life out of the Crawdads faithful in attendance, and dominant pitching on the other side that held the lineup to just two hits through the first six innings ensured that it would be a tortuous day at the yard. 

“I love this league and I think it’s a good one,” Crawdads head coach Brant Cummings said. “I think there are some really good players, but they all have some shortcomings. That’s what you saw today. You saw a lack of confidence once they started to falter, and that’s hard to overcome for some people.” 

The faltering started as soon as the second inning began. Saints shortstop Jax Ryan led off the inning by hitting a ground ball that was fielded by Walnut Creek third baseman Ryley Leininger. Leininger’s right arm normally has the speed and accuracy of a pinpoint missile, but on this occasion, he threw the ball away, and Ryan ended up on third base. 

Crawdads’ right-handed starter George Zaharias struggled to work around the error. He walked the next two batters, forcing the infield to play in, which in turn allowed a single to get through the left side and into the outfield to give Arroyo Seco its first two runs of the game. 

A hit by pitch, a single off Zaharias’s glove, a pitching change, a hit-by-pitch, a walk, another hit-by-pitch, an RBI groundout, a sacrifice fly and a two-run home run all worked together to hand the Saints their massive lead in the second. Four free passes across the next 3.2 innings allowed six more Saints to score, each one making the wound deeper and deeper.

“It was just a lack of attacking the hitters,” left-handed reliever Bradyn Barnes said. “We might’ve seen this team and shied away a little bit. I think we can do a better job at understanding that it’s hard to hit and just go right after them.” 

The southpaw — who committed to New Mexico State on Friday — was one of the few bright spots for the Crawdads, not letting the spiraling momentum knock him off his game. He came in to stop the bleeding in a five-run sixth inning, and carried the momentum over to pitch 3.1 innings of two-hit baseball, where he struck out seven. Six of those seven punchouts came in a row.

“Everything in the past is something I can’t control,” Barnes said. “I just got to be there for my teammates. I’ve got to pick them up. That’s my big thing, picking up other guys, trying to help the team get closer to a win. Unfortunately, (it) didn’t come out that way.”  

The only other left-hander to grace the mound Saturday was Arroyo Seco’s starter Zachary Erdman. Erdman pounded the zone, only allowing two free passes over five innings of work. The Walnut Creek lineup had to respect his ability to throw strikes by swinging the bat.

It’s often said that good things happen when you put the ball in play, but the opposite can also be true. Hits are hard to come by, especially when the vast majority of contact made is weak. The Texas Tech rising senior’s former teammate and Crawdads left fielder Ryan Brome wasn’t shocked to see the performance. 

“He’s a good arm,” Brome said. “He commanded it well, he does a good job of keeping guys off balance mixing (different pitches) and spotted well. It’s baseball, he threw a good game today.”

The Crawdads’ lineup started to come alive against a Saints bullpen that wasn’t as sharp as Erdman. The four runs make the final score a little more pleasant to look at, but doesn’t do much to erase the sour taste of defeat. If there is one consistency, though, that the team has showcased during the inconsistent first two and a half weeks of the summer, it’s that one bad performance won’t stick with the team for long, and they’ll find a way to bounce back. 

“You leave the field knowing you lost today, you got beat pretty bad, ” Brome said. “The most important thing is you flush it and come back tomorrow like nothing happened. It’s really easy to come out defeated the next day after a game like that, but we’re not a team like that. We’ll come out ready to go. Flushed.”

By Ethan Ignatovsky