Mill Creek survives, advances to semis

Published 11:57 pm Tuesday, August 19, 2008

WILLIAMSPORT, Pa. — With his team’s season on the line, Alex Jondal delivered two huge hits, including the walk-off game-winner that vaulted the Mill Creek All Stars into a U.S. semifinal at the Little League World Series.

Jondal belted a 2-2, two-out pitch off the base of the left field wall in the bottom of the seventh inning to score Jason Todd from third base and give Mill Creek a 3-2 win over Jeffersonville, Ind., on Tuesday afternoon.

“I was thinking: ‘I have to shorten up my swing because I have two strikes,” said Jondal, who crushed the pitch over left fielder Brad Koerner’s head after Jeffersonville put five players on the infield. “I just wanted to get a hit so we could win.”

The Northwest champions had to grind it out but did enough to get the job done and extend their season with a win against the Great Lakes champions.

“I was just ecstatic … walk off, you’ll remember that the rest of your life,” said Todd.

Derrick Mahlum walked to lead off the inning, but got thrown out trying to advance to third after Todd walked. After Mahlum was thrown out, Todd took second and advanced to third when the throw from third baseman Hayden Robb scooted into right field.

Mill Creek, the second seed out of Pool A, will face Waipahu, Hawaii, the champions of Pool B tonight at 5 p.m. PDT. Derrick Mahlum will get the start for Mill Creek with Jondal expected to be the first pitcher used in relief.

Pool A ended in a three-way tie with Mill Creek, Hagerstown, Md., and South Lake Charles, La., finishing with 2-1 records, after Hagerstown beat South Lake Charles, 6-4 Tuesday night. The first tiebreaker, head-to-head competition, was rendered meaningless by those results. The two teams that advanced were determined by the second tiebreaker: the fewest runs given up per innings played.

South Lake Charles finished first, having given up just seven runs in 18 innings. Mill Creek, which surrendered 12 runs in 18 innings, had the edge over Hagerstown’s 21 runs in 17 innings.

Mill Creek manager Scott Mahlum knew with all the possible scenarios going into Tuesday his team simply needed to win to control its own destiny. And as it turned out, the clutch hitter was Jondal.

Trailing 2-1, Mill Creek tied it in the bottom of the fifth when Jondal hit a two-out bloop single to left field off reliever Christopher Wenger to score Todd who had doubled with one out. The run was charged to Jeffersonville’s starter Drew Ellis, who had reached the 85-pitch limit after striking out Joakim Soderqvist.

“The past two games haven’t been great,” said Jondal, who went 3-for-4 with two RBI after connecting for only one hit in the Series coming into the game. “I finally got in my hitting rhythm today.”

Todd scored all three Mill Creek runs and went 2-for-3 with a first inning home run over the left-center field wall that tied it after Jeffersonville scored an unearned run in the first.

Jeffersonville took the lead in the top of the second when leadoff man Austin Hines fought off a slew of pitches from Todd, the Mill Creek starter, before smacking a triple and driving in pinch runner Nick Thompson.

Scott Mahlum said Todd didn’t have his best stuff, but he pitched a solid game allowing two runs, one earned on five hits while striking out 11 in 52/3 innings.

“The Todd kid is a pretty doggone good pitcher,” Jeffersonville manager Derek Ellis said. “Nice curveball, throws (the ball) hard. We were able to scratch a couple runs off him.”

Todd entered the sixth only four pitches away from his limit but managed to eke out two outs before having to come out. Left fielder K.J. Neaville nearly lost track of a fly ball off the bat of the first batter Jeffersonville’s Josh Burke, as the wind swirled, but he recovered to make the catch for the first out. Todd struck out Dalton Duley, the final batter he could face.

Alec Kisena, who pitched 11/3 scoreless innings to get the win, came on in relief and hit Brad Koerner and walked Wenger, but coaxed Hines to groundout to second baseman Dan Kingma to end the inning.

Kisena yielded a leadoff double to Ellis in the seventh, but Derrick Mahlum cleanly fielded a grounder and threw to the third baseman Soderqvist who ran Ellis back to Kingma for the tag at second. With two outs and Chandler Dale on third, Hayden Robb lofted a fly ball to right field, where Alek Baumgartner circled under the ball, stabbed at it and hung on to end the game.

Notes: When Mill Creek plays Waipio Little League of Waipahu in Oahu in a U.S. semifinal tonight both managers will be Washington Huskies. Timo Donahue, who played baseball for the Huskies, hit .366 and won a Pac-10 batting title in 1989 and played in the Cleveland Indians organization. Mill Creek manager Scott Mahlum attended UW at the same time as Donahue but didn’t know him.