Senior starting pitcher Seth Tedeschi has blossomed in the CIF-SS Division 4 playoffs, and so has the Dos Pueblos High baseball team.
The Chargers continued their thrilling playoff run with a 7-1 victory over Thousand Oaks in the semifinals and will have an opportunity to play for an elusive CIF-SS championship.
“I’ve got 12 seniors; that’s a lot for a team, but those guys have also been here for their sophomore and junior years, kind of learning how we want to do things here,” said Dos Pueblos High coach George Hedricks. “We’ve been trying to learn how to win for a few years now, and what I mean by that is, there’s days you don’t have your best stuff and you have to find a way to win that game.”
Alexander Hajda launched a home run in the bottom of the first inning for the second consecutive game, giving the Chargers an early 3-0 lead. He finished the game with five RBI.
The immediate run support was more than welcome by Tedeschi and the Dos Pueblos defense as Thousand Oaks was held scoreless until the top of the fifth inning.
“The fact that they were both in the first inning, it immediately puts you on the board, immediately gets you a lead. It’s going to put the other team on their heels a little bit,” said Hedricks of Hajda’s first-inning home runs in consecutive playoff games. “That’s a really good pitcher, and he wasn’t expecting that.”
Tedeschi has started all four of the Chargers’ playoff games, and in the last two, he has left the game with zero earned runs surrendered. Against Thousand Oaks, he filled up the strike zone and let his defense work, which has been a formula for success this season.
“These past few years, we haven’t had the best seasons, and this group of guys, we’ve been playing together since we were 8 years old,” Tedeschi said. “We knew we were the team to do some damage in the playoffs and throughout the entire season.”
In the top of the fifth inning, Thousand Oaks gained some traction with back-to-back singles to lead off the inning. Tedeschi was able to retire the next two batters, but hit the next batter, James Luderer, to load the bases with two outs.
Derek Brunet came on in relief of Tedeschi and induced a ground ball that should have ended the inning, but a Dos Pueblos error allowed Thousand Oaks to score its lone run of the game, shrinking the Chargers’ lead to 3-1.
The next Thousand Oaks batter grounded out as Brunet escaped the jam with limited damage. Brunet held Thousand Oaks to one hit in his 2.1 innings on the mound.
In the bottom of the fifth inning, Dos Pueblos broke open the game with three runs. Zach Gesswein delivered a two-out single through to left field on a hard ground ball, driving in Evan Bean and increasing the Chargers’ lead to 4-1.
Hajda followed with a line shot off the left-field fence that scored Stone Saunders and Gesswein. When the dust settled, Dos Pueblos held a 6-1 lead. The Chargers added one more run in the bottom of the sixth inning on a single to left field by pinch hitter Brody DeMourkas that scored Jack Wilby.
With the victory, Dos Pueblos advances to the CIF-SS Division 4 Championship to take on Ganesha of Pomona on Saturday, May 31, at Blair Field in Long Beach.
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