Melton And Bats Star As Coral Glades Clinches Bye

In a district as top-heavy as 8A-11 is, having a first-round bye in the district tournament is key.

That’s why Coral Glades’ 8-1 win over Coral Springs on Tuesday night was a lot more than just a victory against a city rival.

It means the Jaguars will only have to win one game later this month in the tournament to reach the championship game (and the postseason), instead of two.

“Our first goal was to get a top-two seed, which gets us one step closer to a regional, although it doesn’t guarantee us anything,” Jaguars Manager Jorge Miranda said. “We grinded out at-bats tonight. I think we got five or six runs with two outs, and in high school baseball, those two-out hits are important.”

Along with clutch swings and 15 hits overall, Coral Glades also got a superb outing from right-handed starter Jacob Melton. The senior allowed just one unearned run on four hits in a complete-game effort. He struck out five.

“Jacob has been throwing well the last couple of games. He’s staring to settle into his zone,” Miranda said. “His velocity was up tonight and his curve ball is a lot sharper now than it was earlier this season.”

The Colts, meanwhile, didn’t get the best game from their ace, Jordan Barrett, who struggled with his control early and left after four and two-thirds innings, allowing two runs on six hits with just a lone strikeout.

It was Coral Springs (11-6, 7-4) who struck first, however, when a 4-3 double play groundout by Tre Dingus scored Justin Mixon in the opening inning.

Barrett couldn’t hold the lead for long though, as in the top of the second Alex Lara and Zach Thompson had back-to-back one-out singles before a walk to Oliver Levine loaded the bases.

Nick Diaz then stepped up and drove in a pair of runs with a two-out single to right that just dropped in. He finished the game 3-for-5 with a run scored.

Things stayed at 2-1 in favor of the Jaguars until the sixth inning, when the visitors cracked four straight singles off reliever Dingus, one of which was a Christian Rodriguez RBI single that scored Brian Godoy.

With Melton’s pitch count getting high and the game still in the balance heading into the seventh, a complete game wasn’t guaranteed. But a monster top of the seventh would change things.

A Levine RBI single scored Thompson to make it 4-1, and the Jaguars would end up scoring four more times in the inning as they batted around. 

The top four hitters in the Coral Glades lineup – Diaz, Dominguez, Melton and Thomas Santarcangelo – went 3-for-3 with three RBI and a run scored in the seventh, and were 10-for-19 on the night.

Melton (4-2) then finished things off with two easy groundouts and a strikeout to end his night on 93 pitches.

“I had good location tonight and my curveball was going in for a strike more often than not,” said Melton, who now has three complete games on the season. “As the game went on, my arm actually got looser and I was able to get a little more speed on it. This win was huge, as we don’t have to play that extra game and we can conserve our pitching. It relieves a lot of pressure.”

The Jaguars will certainly feel some pressure on Friday though, when they face Douglas with the top seed on the line.

“I have a lot of respect for what Todd (Fitz-Gerald) has done at Douglas,” Miranda said. “It’s going to be a battle. When the schedule came out, we knew this week was going to be a gauntlet for us.”

As for Colts coach Frank Bumbales, he was honest about what went wrong for his young team.

“They executed with pitching and hitting and we didn’t. That’s high school baseball,” said Bumbales. “This district is wide open though. Anyone can beat anyone. In the tournament, anything can happen. The team that’s hottest, which could be anybody, is likely to win.”

If the Colts take care of Deerfield Beach on Friday, they will likely face Piper in the opening round of the tournament in a couple of weeks.

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