Sonoma’s Snyder shuts the Trojans down in SCL Tournament

Sometimes you just have to tip your cap to the other guy. That was the case last week when the Petaluma High School baseball Trojans played well but were just flat beaten by a superb pitching performance by Sonoma Valley’s Carson Snyder, 2-0, in the first round of the Sonoma County League baseball playoffs.

The Dragon left-hander, pitching from his familiar home mound at Arnold Field, mystified the Trojans, allowing just three hits while striking out six and walking only one. His fastball wasn’t overpowering, but it was quick, leaving many Trojan batters just far enough behind to prevent them from getting good aluminum alloy on the ball.

Snyder had a no-hitter working through five innings, until Danny Marzo ended that dream with a single up the middle.

Petaluma actually played very well, except for the hitting thing.

Starting pitcher Marzo wasn’t at his sharpest, but managed to keep the Dragons pretty much at bay for four innings before Connor Richardson took over and blanked Sonoma the rest of the way. The Trojans backed both pitchers with solid defense, committing just one error and making several extraordinary plays, including a leaping grab by first baseman Tyler Williams, who snared a line drive at the apex of his leap.

Petaluma’s only flaw -and it proved to be fatal - was that it just didn’t hit. Not that the Trojans didn’t have their chances, putting runners on base in six of the seven innings, but they never got the clutch connection needed to send a runner across the plate.

Sonoma scored the only run its pitcher would need in classic fashion in the first inning when Ethan Vitale led off with a single, was adroitly sacrificed to second by Snyder and scampered home on Will Lennon’s two-out single.

An insurance Dragon run scored in the fourth on Colton Mertens’ single, and two sacrifices, one of the bunt variety and one of the fly ball variety that scored Mertens from third base.

That was that. Nothing else transpired for either side in a sharply played contest.

Petaluma had its best scoring opportunity in its last try in the bottom of the seventh. Williams led off with a single up the middle. Two strikeouts later, Porter Slate slapped a single to right field, but Vitale, who had victimized the Trojans repeatedly with his glove in an earlier league win, made a sure-handed pick up of a grounder by Logan Douglas and, with a quick flip to second, sent the Trojans home to contemplate the North Coast Section playoffs.

Sonoma Valley went on to beat league champion Analy, 12-5, to win the SCL Tournament.