I-A BASEBALL: Ramirez scores walk-off run on wild pitch to lift Cowboys by the Eagles

Prior to the Division I-A Southern Region Tournament, Chaparral coach Dave Soto pulled Robert Ramirez aside during practice and told him he had a feeling he’d be carrying the team in the postseason.

Soto looked prophetic on Friday afternoon in an elimination game against Boulder City, as Ramirez triggered a seventh-inning rally with the first of three consecutive singles by the Cowboys. He then scored the walk-off run in a 3-2 win, sending the Cowboys to Saturday’s championship at noon, against host-school Faith Lutheran.

“I went up there thinking it’s my time to shine now,” Ramirez said. “I haven’t done it all year, I just needed to put the barrel on the ball and just have to hustle hard (down the line). He threw me one low and I took it to left-field.”

Matt Ellison and Tyler Crone followed with back-to-back singles, putting Ramirez 90-feet from delivering the winning run. With a 2-1 count on Vicente Hernandez, Boulder City sophomore pitcher Peyton Koopman fired a wild pitch past catcher Colton Bosnos, which allowed Ramirez to come home.

“I had a feeling he would be a very important factor in this tournament,” Soto said of Ramirez. “He struggled during the regular season, both pitching and hitting, (but) he stepped it up yesterday against Faith Lutheran pitching-wise and today with that clutch hit. He just came through.”

Ramirez finished 1-for-4 with an RBI and one run scored, while Ellison was 2-for-4 with a pair of singles and an RBI.

Tommy Crone earned the win for the Cowboys after relieving his brother, Tyler, giving up two hits and one earned run in 4 1/3 innings and striking out six. Tyler Crone pitched the first 2 2/3 innings and allowed two hits, an earned run with two strikeouts.

The Cowboys took an early lead after Jose Ortiz opened the game with a base hit, and later scored when Ramirez hit into a fielder’s choice. Ellison followed with an RBI single to give Chaparral a 2-0 lead.

Boulder City cut the lead in half in the top of the third after Bosnos was hit by a pitch, and scored off of a Nolan Desantis double to deep left-center field. The Eagles tied the game in the fourth when Mario Castanon blasted a double to right-center, and scored on Will Knudsen’s single.

Chaparral had a chance to break the tie in the bottom of the fifth after it loaded the bases, but Hernandez was charged with leaning into a pitch on a full count, and was called out on strikes.

“There was a tough inning there where we thought the game should have been over with, and I honestly disagreed with what happened,” Soto said. “But they kept on fighting back. We did not let that affect us in our game.

“This is a team that has been fighting adversity all year. We have what we have and we try to deal with what we have.”

Boulder City 7, Mojave 0 — The Eagles won by forfeit when Mojave’s starting pitcher Ryan Lawrence recorded his 34th out of the tournament.

Lawrence, who threw a complete game in the Rattlers’ 3-2 win over Moapa Valley on Wednesday, started Friday’s game. He threw 4 1/3 innings.

Nevada Adminstrative Code 386.713 subsection 1 reads: “A pupil who is a pitcher on a team that participates in baseball as a sanctioned sport during a baseball season shall not, during four consecutive days of that season, pitch more than 11 innings or more than 33 outs, including, without limitation, any inning that is conducted to break a tie score between two or more teams.”

Subsection 3 of the same regulation states: “If a pupil specified in subsection 1 violates a provision of that subsection, the team of which he is a member forfeits the game in which the violation occurs.”

Mojave (18-16) led 8-7 at the time of the forfeit.