OLYMPIA — Derek Weldon wants all of his pitchers to be bulldogs.
The head man for the Olympia Bears has the luxury of a deep starting rotation, headlined by Peyton Crass, Travis Kunkel and Landyn Keister. All of them share a similar mentality — attack mode.
Crass embraced that mindset against a red-hot Bonney Lake team Tuesday, restricting the Panthers to a season-low one run in a 6-1 Olympia victory at home to open a two-game set. The junior righty twirled a gem, working six innings of one-run ball while striking out eight batters, walking two and allowing just four singles.
“I was trying to slow the game down and trying to hit the spots I needed to,” Crass said. “This win was immensely important. Every game matters, and it’s just another step closer to victory.”
Crass’s arsenal of pitches includes a whistling fastball, a devastating slider that he said has been his most consistent pitch this season, a changeup and a curveball. His slider was deployed on several of his eight punchouts, and five of his eight strikeouts were on swings and misses.
“He was a bulldog. His stuff was good, he competed very hard, and he did everything we asked of him,” Weldon said of Crass.
Bears pitchers worked out of jams all afternoon, starting with Crass escaping a potential two-out rally by Bonney Lake in the first inning and leaving a pair of runners stranded. One of those runners worked a 12-pitch at-bat to earn a walk and drive Crass’s pitch count up to 21.
Olympia’s bats went to work in the second, with Connor Hardy, Elijah Butler and Landyn Keister leading off the frame with three straight singles.
David Diamant cashed in on a sacrifice flyout to score Butler, and Noah Miller delivered a two-run single to center field to open up a 3-0 lead. Sawyer Dean followed with a single of his own — the fifth of the inning — and scored Miller to complete a four-run stanza.
Crass retired seven Panthers in a row from the end of the first inning through the third, and he received another run of support via a sacrifice fly by Butler in the third. But Bonney Lake, which only had one base hit entering the fifth, wouldn’t stay quiet for long. Three straight singles put the Panthers on the scoreboard before Crass bounced back with two straight strikeouts with two on base. He plunked a batter to load the bases and earned a pop out to break out of another jam.
Crass finished his day with a painless sixth inning, striking out his final two batters.
“His pitch count got up a little bit, but he settled in, had some really nice quick innings and didn’t really have any pressure on him again until the fifth,” Weldon said of Crass. “To come back and be able to finish his outing strong in the sixth was big too. It saved our bullpen.”
Smart base-running by Aiden Apfel in the fifth allowed Brayden Cheeka to score from third. Apfel got caught in a rundown trying to steal second base with two outs, but his stalling on the base paths took attention away from Cheeka, who added the sixth run on the board for Olympia.
Dean took the mound in the seventh looking to slam the door, but it wasn’t an easy conclusion to the game as he needed 22 pitches to cross the finish line. He hit his first batter, and after retiring the next two, he plunked another Panther and walked the next to load the bases. Dean earned a groundout to end the game.
Four Bears — Miller, Dean, Butler and Hardy — recorded two hits apiece as Olympia logged 10 total hits.
“It was productive throughout. We want our offense to be nine guys working in unison. It’s an offense working together, not nine individual hitters,” Weldon said. “We want there to be cohesiveness in the lineup. You look through the lineup today, and everybody did something to produce.”
Olympia (9-2, 5-2 South Puget Sound League) will look to sweep Bonney Lake (6-4-1, 5-2 South Puget Sound League) for the second season in a row when the two league foes meet in Pierce County Wednesday afternoon. The Bears are confident that Tuesday’s win over a new contender in the SPSL was the spark they needed after a two-game skid.
“We know what good baseball looks like for us, and we also know what the opposite of that is. It’s just about us showing up with energy and passion and playing the game the way that we expect to play,” Weldon said. “Our kids are great, and our senior leadership is great. We’ve got a bunch of tough, competitive kids.”
