Southwest’s baseball magic runs out in tough regional semifinal loss to Dwyer
A Southwest baseball team that had prided itself all season long on making remarkable comebacks including one three days earlier over Varela in a regional quarterfinal, finally ran into a wall on Friday night that didn’t budge.
It came in the form of a talented Palm Beach Gardens Dwyer squad.
The Panthers made the trip down south, stepped off their bus and walked on to Andre Dawson Field at Southwest like they owned it.
Dwyer blitzed Southwest pitchers early, went up 5-0 after three-and-a-half innings and then rode their two co-aces on the mound the rest of the way to an easy 11-4 victory in a Region 4-6A semifinal contest.
How lopsided was the game?
The No. 3 seeded Panthers (20-7) were actually one out away from an 11-0 victory before the No. 2 seed Eagles, scored four times thanks to a pair of struggling Dwyer closers on the mound that issued four walks and a hit batter.
“A tough night out there,” Southwest coach Mandy Pelaez said. “When you get this deep into the playoffs and reach this level of competition, you just can’t afford to fall behind the way we did. Our pitching struggled right out of the gate and things just only got worse from there. But credit Dwyer as well, they’ve got a great team that came in here tonight and really took it to us.”
Eagles starter Christian Vazquez, who pitched so brilliantly in Southwest’s big upset of Doral Academy to win the district title a week earlier, just didn’t have it on this night.
He only faced 10 batters and walked five of them before Pelaez came and got him. It mattered little. One by one, from Angel Soto to Euclides Alvarez to Pedro Martinez to Kaleb Hernandez, Southwest pitchers just could not get Panther batters out.
Dwyer scored three in the second, single runs in the third and fourth and then blew things wide open with three runs each in the sixth and seventh.
When the final out had been recorded, the Panthers had wrapped out a total of 16 hits (including a towering home run over the center field fence by catcher Max Abrams) and drawn 10 walks.
“I kept putting in different arms with the same result,” Pelaez said.
Meanwhile Dwyer starting pitcher Nick Rovitti, a Citadel commit and co-ace Kody Morgan, a South Florida commit were virtually unhittable.
After SW catcher Anthony Reyes led off the game with a base hit to right, a Tyler Duarte infield single in the third was the only other hit they gave up.
Already with a five run lead and feeling confident he was going to advance to Monday’s regional final, Dwyer head coach and former Miami Marlins pitcher Jordan Yamamoto pulled Rovitti after three innings to keep him under the maximum number of pitches to be able to pitch Monday and did the same with Morgan, taking him off the mound with two outs in the sixth.
“I’ll have everybody available to me on Monday,” Yamamoto said. “It all worked out well for us tonight.”
In an all-Palm Beach County regional final, Dwyer will host No. 4 seed West Boca Raton at 7 p.m. Monday after West Boca soundly defeated No. 8 seed Hollywood South Broward (three days after the Bulldogs stunned No. 1 seed Doral Academy) 9-0 in the opposite semifinal.
The rough night took nothing away from what Pelaez said was a terrific season for the Eagles, who finished 21-7 and were looking to advance to a regional final for the first time since 1999, when they made their lone trip to the state final four.
“I feel sorry for our seniors because you didn’t want it to end this way for them but despite the struggles tonight, it doesn’t take away from a really great season that we had,” Pelaez said. “Winning 21 games and then beating Doral to win the district was a great accomplishment and something we can build on for the future.”