CHINO HILLS — It wasn’t the ideal pitching situation for the Ayala baseball team Thursday.
With a chance to clinch a league title, the Bulldogs were down a pitcher. So they started with Jaden Valenzuela and likely needed several relievers since Valenzuela only averages two innings per appearance.
“I was telling my coach we were going to win an 8-9 game,” Ayala coach Brad McGuire said. “That was the goal. Get in there and no matter what they score, we just have to score one more.”
But the pitching exceeded McGuire’s expectations and Valenzuela and Hayden Hovey combined on a three-hitter in a 6-0 victory over Bonita that clinched the outright Palomares League title.
“If you see our banner in the gym, there’s not a lot of (league) titles,” McGuire said. “I think this is the fifth one in school history. This was our third in the last five years. We split with them (Bonita) two years ago. It’s always good to do it against Bonita, because they have a really good team, they compete and they’ve been at the top of our league for a while.”
Bonita (15-10 overall, 10-4 in league) hosts Ayala (18-7, 13-1) in the league finale Saturday. Each team has one nonleague game remaining next week.
Valenzuela helped Ayala get off to a good start by allowing one hit, two walks and a hit batter in three innings. McGuire was only expecting him to pitch an inning or two. At the plate, Valenzuela was 2 for 3 with two RBIs.
“I felt great. I felt like everything was working,” Valenzuela said. “I felt like my fastball was working, slider was working, changeup here and there.”
Then Hovey pitched the final four innings, allowing two hits and striking out three. They were the pitching duo because scheduled starter Easton Sarmiento suffered a knee injury while celebrating hitting a game-tying home run in the seventh inning of Tuesday’s win over Bonita.
In the meantime, Ayala played small ball, successfully executing four bunts and taking advantage of Bonita mistakes.
“I’ve watched a couple of games and not necessarily against the defense but on the mound side and our whole goal was to get him (Bonita starting pitcher Daniel Nageer) out of the game,” McGuire said. “We knew if we could get him frustrated with that a little bit, the small ball, that would possibly help us.”
The Bulldogs got on the scoreboard in the second inning, loading the bases with no outs on a single, a hit batter and a bunt single.
With one out and the bases still loaded, a wild pitch scored the first run, and after a walk reloaded the bases, Aidan Erlandsen was hit by a pitch to make it 2-0.
An error leading off the third inning led to three more runs as Caleb Trugman hit an RBI single and Valenzuela hit a sacrifice fly.
“We had to play small ball, we had to play hard,” Valenzuela said. “We did what we had to do, execute.”
Nageer ended up going five innings, allowing six runs (three earned).
Bonita coach Ryan Marcos felt his team could’ve done a better job at the plate.
“I don’t think we played the game we usually play today and I don’t know why,” Marcos said.
“I don’t think we were there. We were a little flat. We made some mistakes on defense, uncharacteristic mistakes. Nag did a good job, he kept us in the game pitching. But we couldn’t hit today.”
Cody White had two of Bonita’s three hits and was the only baserunner to reach third when he did so in the first inning.
While Ayala has clinched the league title, the Bulldogs are still incentivized to win their final two games, McGuire said. He believes the team is locked into Division 1 and wins would only improve the Bulldogs’ spot in the bracket.
“Now the goal is obviously to get three (wins against Bonita),” McGuire said. “With this new playoff system, it’s hard to go light because if we drop a game we’re going to drop to the bottom of D1. So we have to make sure we’re going after it, still.”
