The Manteca Buffaloes dropped the series finale against Central Catholic 5-1 Friday afternoon, losing control of first place in the Valley Oak League in the process with just three league games remaining.
The win gave Central Catholic (10-4, 14-6) the series win after dropping Monday’s contest 9-7 and winning Wednesday 16-6 to vault themselves into first place in the VOL.
“We were a little off today,” Buffaloes coach Mark Ruiz said. “Obviously, wish we would have gotten more than four hits in the game. I thought both of our guys pitched really well, but when you don’t get the offensive side, it’s going to be tough in this league.”
Junior Cam Jimenez started the game for Manteca (10-5, 17-6) by allowing base hits to the first three Raiders he faced before battling back to record the next two outs. Jimenez looked to get out of the first unscathed before fielding error allowed the first run of the game to score and put Central Catholic up. Battling would be a theme on the day for Jimenez, who ended his outing throwing five innings, scattering 10 hits and allowing three earned runs while striking out three and stranding seven Raiders on the base paths.
Manteca battled back in the bottom of the first to level the game at 1-1 against Central Catholic ace Kayden McHenry without recording a hit. After a leadoff walk from second baseman Edward Anthony, Anthony stole second and advanced to third on a balk from McHenry. Jimenez would then help his own cause with a ground ball to shortstop to drive in the lone run for Manteca on a fielder’s choice. McHenry ended his outing throwing seven innings of four hit ball striking out seven Manteca hitters.
“We knew we were going to have to bring it today playing against a good team like Manteca,” McHenry said. “Honestly, I don’t think my stuff was as good as it could be, so I really just tried to challenge hitters knowing I have the best defense in the league behind me, and they really showed that.”
The biggest hit of the game came off the bat of Central Catholic first baseman Joe Farinha in the top of the third. After McHenry and Jacob Kiesel reached on singles, Farinha sent a Jiminez fastball deep to left field that cleared the shorter-than-usual fence due to some construction going on for a three-run home run to put the Raiders up 4-1.
“The kid has big power, and I don’t think he got all of it, but he got enough of it,” Central Catholic coach Danny Ayala said. “Joe has been coming up with big hits for us all season long, and you just can’t overstate how big that one was for us.”
Pitching with the lead, McHenry would sit the Buffaloes down in order in the fourth, before allowing Noah Navarro and Nick Garcia to reach on base hits to start the fifth. In a bit of the tough luck Manteca saw all game long, Anthony came up and sent a hard hit ground ball right at the third baseman, who got Navarro in a rundown before ultimately tagging him out. The next two Buffaloes would fly out to get McHenry out of the jam.
“We preach mental toughness here, and Kayden really exemplified that today,” Ayala said. “He dug deep in a few spots today and relied on his defense to make plays behind him to get him out of a few jams.”
The loss puts Manteca one game back in the loss column to Central Catholic in the race for the VOL championship. Central Catholic ends its league season with three games against Mountain House before making up a rain-out against Sierra. Manteca goes into a league bye week next week before the season finale series against cross town rival East Union.
“We’ve kind of put ourselves in a bind here for the league title,” Ruiz said. “We definitely need a sweep now in that final series and will need some help from some other teams. We’ll use the week off to get better and hopefully put ourselves in a good position to take all three against EU.”
