Patterson baseball wins 2-0 despite Gustine no-hitter

Ben Griset had no room for error, so he didn’t make any mistakes.

Still, Gustine High’s pitcher went from no hits to no win during Tuesday’s tilt with the visiting Patterson High baseball team.

Griset struck out 14, walked two and hit a batter, but didn’t allow a player to reach on a hit. Despite his effort, Patterson pitcher David Gonsalves scored twice for a 2-0 victory.

For the Tigers, the unlikely win couldn’t come at a better time. The victory snapped a five-game losing skid and helped Patterson hold onto second place in the hotly contested Western Athletic Conference.

“We’re going to battle all the way through,” Patterson coach Benji Lozano said. “We had our heads down after the Atwater tournament, but good teams respond, and we know that we are going to have to fight to stay in contention for a spot in the playoffs.”

Gonsalves threw seven scoreless innings, striking out seven batters and allowing four hits, to lead the Tigers, but it was his heads-up base running that made the difference.

The senior ace was drilled by a Griset fastball in the top of the second inning, and he eventually scored the Tigers’ first run, scooting around the bases on a walk, a sacrifice and an error.

“The seniors on this team want to go out on top,” Gonsalves said. “We hit a bump, but we don’t want to stay down. It’s up to the seniors to be leaders and to help the younger players on the team realize that this is it.

“It’s crunch time for us.”

Gonsalves reached on an error in the fourth — one of three Gustine blunders — and eventually scored on a passed ball to keep the Tigers (6-13 overall, 6-3 WAC) ahead.

Gustine (7-12, 4-6) had runners on third base three times, but Gonsalves stranded them there.

With just six games remaining in the regular season, Patterson is in position to make a run at a playoff berth and are two games behind Central Catholic for first in the WAC.

“We are really just taking it on a game-to-game basis,” Lozano said. “We can’t afford to take any team for granted.”

Still, after being swept at last week’s Atwater Lions Club Baseball Tournament, getting back into the win column felt pretty good.

“It’s important that we show that losses aren’t going to keep us down,” Gonsalves said. “We can hang our heads or we can try to get back to where we were earlier in the year.

“This team knows what it feels like to win. Now we just have to work together to do it.”