Any pitcher who watched Waiakea’s mistake-prone defense falter in the BIIF Division I baseball championship series might have concluded that he needed to start striking out more batters.
Not Ty Honda.
Friday’s HHSAA tournament play-in game at Wong Stadium was a classic case of a pitcher daring a team to hit ‘em where they ain’t.
Leilehua couldn’t, and Honda delivered a two-hit shutout that required just one strikeout and 80 pitches, and Kalai Rosario collected a double and a triple in a 9-0 victory that sent Waiakea to the state tournament for the 17th consecutive season.
“The defense is always there,” said Honda, who effectively mixed four pitches. “The other team is good, they can put the ball in play, and they hit it straight to our guys.”
The Warriors (14-3) made five errors Tuesday in getting swept by Hilo, requiring them to come back to Wong three days later. This time, their defense was clean and crisp, and the fielders had plenty of chances the way Honda was pitching to contact. The right-hander induced 11 ground ball outs and nine in the air.
“I knew we would come out strong today because we knew what was on the line,” said Rosario, a center fielder. “It’s baseball, errors happen. It matters what happens in the next game. We never doubted ourselves.”
Waiakea will play Saint Louis at 4:15 p.m. Wednesday in a state first-round game on Maui. The third-seeded Vikings have a bye into Thursday’s quarterfinals, awaiting either Maui or Kailua.
The Warriors have advanced to the state final the past two years under different scenarios, playing in the first round in 2017 and getting the bye last season.
“I’m so happy for these kids, because they deserve to be a state team,”coach Eric Kurosawa said, “but the only way they deserve it is you have to earn it.”
Kurosawa said Waiakea, not surprisingly, was disappointed at practice Wednesday but bounced back well.
“Today, the coaches were saying pregame that they were loose,” Kurosawa said. “We wondered if they were too loose?”
It helped that Waiakea played from ahead after Rosario doubled and scored on Brandon Nakayama’s groundout in the first inning.
Rosario finished 3 for 4, including a two-run triple as Waiakea put the game away by scoring five times in the sixth inning. Safea Mauai followed with an RBI double off the fence in right field, pumping his fist and yelling to his teammates in the dugout.
“We never tried to do something we’re not supposed to,” Rosario said. “We all did our job.”
True to his word, Waiakea got contributions from up and down the lineup, including the bottom four.
Khaden Victorino doubled to left center to lead off the second, moved to third on Chris Hatakenaka-Gibbs’ sacrifice and scored on Cody Kunimitsu’s sacrifice fly. Devin Midel (1 for 2), who reached when he was hit by a pitch, scored on Stone Miyao’s single to make in 3-0.
Ty Yukumoto pitched four innings for the Mules (9-8) of the OIA. Last year, Leilehua beat Hilo in the play-in game at Wong.
Hatakenaka-Gibbs fueled the rally in the sixth with a hit.
In the fifth, Miyao singled, took third on Rosario’s single and came home on Mauai’s flyout.
By that time, the Warriors were forgetting all about that 4-3 setback to Hilo on Tuesday.
“We didn’t show up,” Honda said, “but we learned a lot from that loss.”
Leilehua 000 000 0 – 0 2 2
Waiakea 120 015x – 9 8 0
