DELANO - Litchfield moved to the cusp of its first state baseball tournament trip with a 6-4 victory over Delano in the Section 5AA winner’s bracket final on Monday.
The Dragons’ Braeden Wahl and Eddie Estrada both hit two-run home runs, helping Litchfield erase a deficit and withstand a seventh-inning Delano rally.
“It’s been a lot of fun,” said Dragons head coach Jeff Wollin of his team’s four-game postseason winning streak. “A lot of little things have to go right. Like tonight, when we couldn’t get the ball out of the infield and then we get those two big hits (from Wahl and Estrada). It’s a funny game sometimes.”
Litchfield now awaits the winner of today’s Paynesville-Delano game at 5 p.m. Thursday in Delano. The winner would need to knock of the Dragons twice to advance.
Litchfield put itself in that favorable position behind those big bats and another effective outing by Ross Wendlandt.
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Wendlandt allowed seven hits and walked four, but he limited Delano to three earned runs and he struck out seven, working a complete game.
Delano led 3-2 after five innings, but Wahl connected on his home run off Delano’s Hunter Hart in the sixth to make it 4-3 Litch.
Estrada’s bomb in the top of the seventh made it 6-3.
“Those were big runs and we needed every one of them,” Wollin said.
But Delano, the defending section champion, put a run across in its last at bat and had runners on first and second with two outs. The runners were off on a 3-2 pitch and Delano hit a slow roller up the middle. From shortstop, Estrada got to the ball and got off a looping throw to first from his knee to get the game-ending out.
Litchfield 6, Delano 4
Litchfield 000 112 2 - 6 7 1
Delano 100 110 1 - 4 7 2
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HITTING – Litchfield: Jake Schultz 1-4 r-2, Cody Klabunde 2-4, Eddie Estrada 2-4 hr rbi-2 r-2, Braeden Wahl 1-4 hr rbi-3, Andy Schneider 1-3, Riley Johnson 0-2 r … Delano: Nate Meyers 2-3 rbi, Toby Hanson 1-3 hr rbi-2
PITCHING (ip-h-r-er-bb-so) - Litchfield: Ross Wendlandt (W) 7-7-4-3-4-5 … Delano: Hunter Hart (L) 7-7-6-4-2-9
