Prep baseball: Petaluma topples rival Casa Grande in VVAL showdown

The Trojans’ dark purple jerseys were soaked as they emerged from their team room — not sweat, but water from a quick, raucous and out-of-sight celebration following a big win over their rivals Tuesday.

Petaluma got 5⅔ strong innings from starting pitcher Arlo Pendleton and scored in all but two innings in a 9-5 win over Casa Grande to pull into a two-way with the Gauchos for second place in the Vine Valley Athletic League.

The Trojans (12-6, 5-2) took advantage of some early miscues from the Gauchos (11-5, 5-2) to leap out to a 6-1 lead after four innings, which they extended to 8-1 in the fifth. The Gauchos’ offense finally started clicking in the later innings, but it was too little, too late. The loss snapped a three-game winning streak for Casa.

“Today we did what we haven’t been able to do all season, which is run what we call our ‘spread offense,’ where we just put as much pressure as we can on opponents,” Petaluma head coach Scott Osder said. “That was the difference today. Our pitching was good, and we knew they’d kind of come back, but the difference was that offensively we just executed really well.”

The Trojans scored three runs in the first off thanks mainly to an error and passed ball to set an early tone for the afternoon. After the Gauchos got a run back in the top of the fourth, the Trojans answered right back with three more runs in bottom half of the inning, highlighted by a two-out, two-run double from August Cuneo.

Cuneo then quickly added another highlight in the top of the fifth as he threw out Clint Rea trying to steal third to end the frame. His teammates mobbed him in celebration as he returned to the dugout.

“I got into a 3-2 count and just put a good swing on it, ended up making good contact and then came out and got that guy out at third,” said Cuneo, a junior, who’s batting .340 on the year. “The energy was up, our whole dugout was hyped, and the other team was kind of dead. That just allowed us to get more confidence and just keep scoring.”

The Trojans parlayed that energy into two more runs in the bottom of the fifth to blow the game open at 8-1.

Pendleton worked into the sixth inning, striking out four and allowing three hits. He did walk four and was charged with four earned runs, but his offense did more than enough to help him earn the win.

It was another great outing for the junior who’s emerged as one of the Trojans’ most consistent arms at the top of the rotation. After starting the year as a reliever, he’s now logged a team-high 35 innings pitched with a 5-1 record and a 2.00 earned run average.

The day got even better for Pendleton postgame. Following the Trojans’ celebration, he gathered his teammates around in the dugout and told them he had committed the night before to play collegiately at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

“Feels good, just been trusting the process and working everyday,” said Pendleton. “(The offer) eventually came but I’m just happy to be out here playing with the boys.”

“He’s earned it,” said Osder. “He wasn’t on anyone’s radar a month ago, and our pitching coach has done a really good job with him. It’s great. He was fielding all sorts of phone calls and interest over the last month.”

Pendleton will join senior teammate Dante Vachini at Cal Poly after he graduates next year.

As for the Gauchos, the last few weeks have tested their depth as a number of key players have missed time with injuries. Several, including standout senior catcher JT Summers, have finally started to work back onto the field, but they remain a long way from fully healthy.

Still, that didn’t excuse their poor play Tuesday, head coach Pete Sikora said.

“We made physical mistakes, we made mental errors — obviously, did not play our best game,” he said. “They outpitched us, they outhit us and they played better defense, and last time I checked that’s not a winning recipe.”

They’ll look to bounce back and salvage a series split in the finale Thursday. A loss would drop them a spot in the league standings and make their road down the stretch to much harder to capture another league title.

“Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn, sometimes you do both — but as I told the guys, we’ve got to learn from this, get better tomorrow, and the good news is we still control our own destiny,” Sikora said. “We’ve got two teams in league with two losses, one with one, and we play all of those teams.

“So we take care of business and we can hang a pennant, which is our goal.”

You can reach Staff Writer Gus Morris at 707-304-9372 or gus.morris@pressdemocrat.com. On X (Twitter) @JustGusPD.