With the regular season winding down, the Santa Barbara Foresters maintained their hot streak with a 14-2 victory over the Santa Maria Indians on Friday.
The win extended the Foresters’ winning streak to five games. They are now 25-5-1 overall this summer.
“This is the best start we’ve had since 2020. We’re 25-5, and we play in a good league,” said Foresters manager Bill Pintard. “We’ve won a lot of games coming from behind. We just stay with it and stay with it.”
Santa Barbara broke the game open with a six-run sixth inning, collecting five hits and driving in six runs in the frame to turn a one-run lead into a commanding 8-2 advantage.
The Foresters took an early 1-0 lead in the first inning without recording a hit. Easton Moomau reached after being hit by a pitch, advanced to third, and scored on a throwing error during a first-and-third play.
Foresters starter Henry Prindl delivered a strong outing, allowing just one run over five innings while striking out nine. The only blemish came in the third inning, when Santa Maria tied the game with four hits, several of which were softly hit. Outside of that inning, Prindl limited the Indians to just two baserunners, both via walks.
Santa Barbara regained the lead in the fifth inning. Aidan Camberg singled and advanced to second on a wild pitch before consecutive RBI singles from Moomau and Cole Chamberlain gave the Foresters a 3-1 lead.
Santa Maria answered in the top of the sixth against reliever Carter Speights, opening the inning with a single before an RBI triple trimmed the deficit to one run. The comeback attempt was short-lived, however, as the Foresters responded with six runs in the bottom half of the inning.
“It’s kind of like the perfect storm. When the perfect storm comes, we’ll put up a six-run inning,” Pintard said. “We’ve got really good chemistry.”
Reliever Grady Westphal took over after Speights and struck out two batters in his first inning of work, helping preserve the Foresters’ momentum.
Santa Barbara added another run later in the game when Jack Fowler, who primarily serves as a pitcher, drove in Donovan Lasalle with a sacrifice fly to push the Foresters into double digits.
Nabarro capped the scoring in the eighth inning with a grand slam, his first home run of the season, extending the lead to 14-2. The blast marked the Foresters’ 20th home run of the season.
“I told myself to take a deep breath, relax, see my pitch, and trust myself. That’s what I did, and he happened to throw me a good pitch,” Nabarro said. “The ball doesn’t really fly too much here. The ball kind of dies, so off the bat I didn’t think it was gone. I thought it was going to hit the wall or something. Once I saw it fly over, I was so excited.”
Westphal finished the final three innings, striking out six batters, including three in the ninth, to earn his first save and complete the combined 15-strikeout effort by the Foresters’ pitching staff.
Santa Barbara concludes its regular season this weekend with back-to-back home games against the San Luis Obispo Blues at Eddie Mathews Field.
