West Broward No Match For Flanagan’s Mesa Jr.

Every few years, a new rivalry pops up in Broward County that becomes one of the premiere rivalries of its time. West Broward and Flanagan are relatively new to the county, but over the past several years, the two teams have provided the backdrop for some of the most dramatic games the county has seen.

Friday night was set up to be another of those games, with the 6-1 Falcons hosting the 7-0 Bobcats. More than 200 fans were on hand to see the first match-up of the season between the two teams, and Flanagan fans got their money’s worth thanks to Jose Mesa Jr. The senior threw six innings of no-hit ball and hit a three-run homer to lead the Falcons to a 9-0 District 8A-12 win.

Mesa Jr. threw a no-hitter in his past outing versus Cypress Bay, and the senior almost pulled the feat off again on this night. Mesa Jr. used a low 90s fastball and a devastating slider to overpower Bobcat hitters. Flanagan head coach Ray Evans contemplated sending Mesa Jr. out there in the seventh to try and complete the no-hitter, but with a long season still ahead, Evans erred on the side of caution with his ace.

“I was hoping he could keep his pitch count under 100 before we got to the seventh, and then we would have let him go like last time, but he was just too high after the sixth,” Evans said. “He’s so strong right now from what he’s done in the offseason, going over to the Dominican and working out with his dad, and all the extra running he does, that he could have finished, but right now it’s early, and we wanted to keep him under 100.”

Evans turned to Gentry Fortuno to finish the no-hitter in the seventh, and the freshman may have done so if not for a ground ball to first that took a bad hop and hit Falcons first baseman Ryan Dodge in the face. Dodge was taken out of the game for precautionary reasons, and the bad hop went for the lone hit of the game for West Broward.

For the Falcons, offense was not a problem against Bobcats starter Tyler Draughon. The Bobcats ace did not have his best stuff early, and Falcons hitter made him pay. Andres Sanchez started the scoring with a solo home run in the first and added a single later in the game, but it was the Falcons’ six-seven-eight hitters who made the difference in the game. Combined, Mesa Jr., Rafael Betances and Dodge went 7-for-8 with two walks and five RBI.

“Pitching with the lead is always a plus,” said Mesa Jr., speaking about his team’s offense Friday. “I feel like we’re in a good spot after this win, but there’s still stuff we can work on, so that we just keep getting better from here.”

West Broward will have to put their first loss of the season behind them quickly as they begin play in the Titans Classic Spring Break tournament today against Reagan. Head coach Sergio Ambros has his team taking one game at a time and also knows that even though the score looked lopsided against Flanagan, his team showed a fighting spirit until the end.

“Despite the 9-0 score, I told them tonight that I’m not as upset with them tonight as I was with an earlier win 5-2,” Ambros said. “We didn’t give up. We had guys laying out 9-0 for fly balls. We had guys turning double plays, so they didn’t give up. Tonight, I walk away proud of them. They could have mailed it in, and they didn’t. We expect to play these guys two or three more times, and we just have to do a little bit better job with our approaches at the plate.”

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