PREP BASEBALL: Lemon Bay sweats out win against Lely

ENGLEWOOD — Holding a seemingly comfortable 6-0 lead after five innings, Lemon Bay had to survive a near-meltdown by its bullpen and hung on for a 7-4 win against Lely in a District 4A-12 baseball quarterfinal Monday night.

After three scoreless innings, the Manta Rays took advantage of some wildness by Trojans starter Rowen Lee to score four times in the fourth and twice more in the fifth and appeared to be cruising to an easy victory.

Lemon Bay starter Mayson Roberts threw five scoreless innings before walking the leadoff batter in the top of the sixth. Drew Smith came on to walk another batter and hit two more before giving way to Will Landers, who finally got out of the inning thanks to some sloppy Lely baserunning.

But Landers walked three batters and hit another in the top of the seventh to force in another run before Austin Woodbury struck out the final two Trojans to end the game and send the Mantas to the semifinals.

“We’re not a team that can coast,” Lemon Bay coach Zach Gonzales said. “We get a 6-0 lead. Our starter was doing really well so we turned it over to the pen and our pen has been our strength sometimes, but today it just wasn’t. We had 12 freebies out of the pen and that’s going to cause some problems.

“But Woodbury was able to come in and shut the door and we’re moving on and that’s all that matters.”

The Mantas broke through in the fourth as they loaded the bases with no outs on a walk by Wyatt Bush, a single by Wilson Shaw and a walk by Noah Hale. Jake Patrick drove in Bush with a sacrifice fly to center and a throwing error on a bunt by Bryson Vaughn let in another run. Lee then threw a wild pitch, and two runners crossed the plate before catcher Julian Rios located the ball against the backstop.

The Mantas got two more in the fifth after walks by Bush and Shaw and a double steal put runners on second and third. Bush came home on another wild pitch and Patrick’s single drove in Shaw to make it 6-0.

Lemon Bay (9-13) scored another run on another wild pitch in the sixth, then had to hold on in the seventh as the Trojans (7-17) brought the go-ahead run to the plate.

“We’re going to take the runs where we can get them,” Gonzales said. “Once its the playoffs nothing matters, right? It’s a 0-0 record. It’s all about going 1-0 that day and that’s what we’re going to try to do tomorrow.”