Sabers Strike with Quintana’s Brilliance

While the saying goes, “revenge is a dish served best cold,” Adam Quintana, decided to deliver nothing but heat. Quintana’s masterful performance propelled his Diamond Valley Sabers (12-7, 6-3) to a 3-2 victory over the Glendale Angelenos (17-6) on Wednesday night at Stengel Field.

Quintana went the distance for his club, pitching nine strong innings, surrendering only two runs, and striking out 11 batters along the way.

How dominant was the right-hander?

The longer the game went, the stronger he appeared. This much was evident when he retired five straight Angelenos via the strikeout to record his second complete game of the summer.

The game appeared to be a repeat of the Sabers and Angelenos first encounter, an 11-1 drubbing on June 2^nd as the Angelenos raced out to an early lead.

Scott Hong reached on an infield single, stole second base, and later scored in the inning off of an RBI single by Sako Chapjian to give the Angelenos an early 1-0 lead.

Danny Casey, batting in the nine spot, hit a towering solo blast over the left center field fence to push the Angelenos lead to 2-0 at the end of the third inning.

That was all for the Angelenos on this night.

The Sabers had an equally difficult time to generate any offense off of Glendale’s starter, Thomas Korn.

Korn pitched five innings of impressive ball yielding a mere two hits, striking out and walking two batters, while surrendering one unearned run. Korn’s command was sharp throughout as Diamond Valley was never in a position to have a big inning.

The Sabers bats finally woke up in the eighth inning as Angelenos pitcher, Kyle Kay, was properly greeted on the first at-bat. Leadoff hitter Cody Davis belted a fastball into the left center field gap for a standup double to get things going. Steven Ball followed that up with a single into left to put Davis on third with nobody out. Anthony Payne would fly out to shallow center field before things got wild.

Ball appeared to bait the Angelenos into a pickle, but his running gaffe was immediately thwarted for the second out of the inning. After a Bryant Vega walk, David Castillo whacked a fastball into center field that was misplayed by Edgar Montes. Castillo’s RBI single led to Montes’ two base field error allowing Vega to come in for the go ahead lead.

The Angelenos had one last chance to beat Quintana in the bottom of the eighth, but they had their own base running blunders.

Casey led things off with a walk and then Hong was immediately hit by a pitch to put runners on first and second with nobody out. With Casey advancing to third, Hong tried to induce a throw over to first in order to spring Casey at third. The Sabers obliged, as they appeared to have Hong hung out to dry in a run down. Before Castillo could tag out Hong, he immediately fired over to Craft at third base to catch Casey off the bag.

Castillo’s heads up play caught Casey off guard before Quintana struck out the next five batters to end the contest.

-David Gascon

Tags: Adam Quintana, Bryant Vega, Cody Davis, Danny Casey, David Castillo, Eric Craft, Glendale Angelenos, Scott Hong