Dragons end baseball season with heartbreaker

The Sonoma Valley Dragons baseball team left it all on the field Tuesday night, but came up short in a tense back-and-forth game against Piner.

The game’s winner was only decided in the bottom of the seventh, as Piner scored to break a 7-7 tie and end up the victor.

For the Dragons, Carsten Cuda and Anthony Tommasi got two hits each, and Tomassi and Jeremy Mackling also had two RBIs, Macklin’s pair on a fourth-inning triple.

Mackling also pitched the first three innings, striking out three but giving up four hits and five runs. Brendan Hogan pitched four innings in relief and also gave up four runs, taking the loss.

For a while there it looked like the Dragons might pull off an upset over the second-place Prospectors, drawing first blood with a run in the first inning and four runs in the second.

But Piner mirrored the Sonoma Valley run production in the second and third, and a 5-5 tie held for a couple innings.

Then Sonoma Valley began to build up a promising lead with single runs in the fifth and sixth, at one point leading 7-5. But a two-run bottom of the sixth for Piner tied the game again, and the winning run came across at the end of the seventh.

The game ends the Dragon regular season with a 6-6 league record, 10-11 overall.

The SCL playoffs begin on Tuesday, May 15, with games at Arnold Field, schedule to be announced.