The Long Beach Coast is preparing for Pioneer Baseball League playoffs after clinching a spot in their inaugural season. The Coast went 4-1 in the final week of regular action, and playoffs are set to start Sept. 10.<\/p>\n
Long Beach spent their week at home hosting the Modesto Roadsters. In their first game of the final series, the Coast picked up a 4-2 win. Gary Grosjean started on the bump for the first time since July 4, tossing five scoreless innings and only allowing two hits with four strikeouts.<\/p>\n
Center fielder Emilio Corona smacked a three-run homer in the second inning to support Grosjean, putting the Coast up 4-0 at the end of two innings. Long Beach held onto the lead to give Grosjean his sixth win of the season.<\/p>\n
In game two, the Coast dropped the game in a Knockout Round loss. Long Beach battled to a 6-6 tie by the end of nine innings behind a fourth inning rally. The Coast caught up with the Roadsters thanks to back-to-back hits from Cuba Bess and Matthew Bardowell, and Jacob Jablonski put Long Beach up with an RBI double.<\/p>\n
Bess managed to tie the game 6-6 in the seventh inning with a two-run single. In the Knockout Round, Cuba Bess and Modesto\u2019s Bryce Cannon both hit two home runs to go to round two.<\/p>\n
In the second round, Tyler Williams hit three consecutive home runs to put the Roadsters up. Jablonski came up short to give Modesto the win.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Long Beach got their revenge the very next day, securing a knockout win over Modesto in three rounds. The Coast got started early, knocking in two runs in the first inning. The Roadsters quickly battled back to go up 3-2 heading into the fifth frame.<\/p>\n
Third baseman Benjamin Rosengard had a productive day at the plate, going 3-for-4 with two RBIs. Rosengard\u2019s performance kept the Coast even with the Roadsters before Corona smashed a homer in the eighth inning to put Long Beach up 5-4.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Modesto\u2019s Tyler Williams kicked off the ninth inning with a solo blast to even the score and send the game into the Knockout Round. The home run derby went to three rounds, where Jaxon Byrd slugged the game-winner to give Long Beach the W.<\/p>\n
This momentum carried over to the next game, where the Coast dominated in an 11-0 win. Starter Nathan Hemmerling led the way to the victory, becoming the first pitcher in franchise history to reach 100 strikeouts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After the third inning, Hemmerling and reliever Steven Ordorica combined to retire 16 consecutive Roadsters. Center fielder Robert Pitts Jr. supported his pitchers with his offensive performance, going 2-for-3 at the plate with three RBIs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Saturday, Long Beach and Modesto went back to the Knockout Round and secured a comeback win to finish atop the PBL standings. Over halfway through the game, the Coast trailed 8-1 before their offense sparked the 9-8 win.<\/p>\n
Corona was huge in the comeback win. The center fielder hit a grand slam in the seventh inning to cut Modesto\u2019s lead to 8-6. Bess hit an RBI double in the eighth inning to tie the game up and send the teams to their third Knockout Round of the series.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bess was the Knockout hero, slugging three home runs to secure the Coast\u2019s win. Long Beach finished with an overall record of 68-27 in their first PBL season. The Coast will kick off playoffs at home Sept. 10 with first pitch set for 6:35pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Long Beach Coast is preparing for Pioneer Baseball League playoffs after clinching a spot in their inaugural…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-456597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}