Freshman triumphs in debut

COSTA MESA — What else do you do after winning your first varsity start as a freshman pitcher?

For Tyler Peterson, he slipped through the fence near left field and ran to go watch his former Costa Mesa High baseball team, the freshmen, play on the nearby field.

Fresh from helping the varsity Mustangs get out of a funk and beating visiting Greeley West of Colorado, 8-4, the right-hander lied on his stomach.

Better than being on his back during the Mustangs’ Beach Pit Classic opener on Monday.

The 5-foot-7, 140-pounder almost found himself in that position in the sixth inning. It was his last against a team arriving at John Wayne Airport from Denver a couple of hours before the 1 p.m. start.

On one of his rare pitches not around the strike zone, Peterson ran home to cover the plate as catcher Matt Pisarski hurried to the backstop to retrieve the wild pitch.

A runner was coming down the third-base line and he wasn’t sliding home. Instead it appeared as the only way the runner figured he’d reach the plate would be to barrel Peterson over.

A scared Peterson held onto Pisarski’s throw and tagged the runner out, getting himself out of the inning and a precarious situation.

“He kind of ran straight, and then stopped,” Peterson said. “I didn’t know what to do.”

The freshman call-up fooled everyone into believing he knew what he was doing for much of his six innings.

Peterson described his outing as “fun” and said his older brother, senior first baseman Chad Peterson, just told him before the game to not overthrow.

What Peterson did was dupe Greeley West (7-3) throughout with a dominant changeup, which he used effectively behind in counts. He struck out six batters, four in a row during the fourth and fifth innings, and allowed four runs and seven hits.

The act was so convincing that Pisarski said before the game the team expected nothing “too great” out of Peterson, who was 4-0 on the freshman team.

What the Mustangs (9-6) received was someone putting a stop to a two-game slide and a spark.

“It seemed like when we were warming up that we were down after the loss to Estancia and Calvary [Chapel],” Pisarski said of last week’s Orange Coast League games in which the Mustangs were outscored, 20-6. “We were kind of out of it. It took us an inning or two. Then we got it. We were just like, ‘We got to open this up.’ ”

The Mustangs did just that after Greeley West jumped on Peterson in the top of the first.

Andrew Downing put the Spartans up, 2-0, with a two-run home run to left field. At first Downing saw the homer as a positive. It was the third baseman’s first. But after observing teammates, he said his home run hurt the team, offensively, the rest of the way. “This short fence kind of played some mind games on us,” said Downing, whose team was forced to play an hour later in the loser’s bracket. “That home run at a field in Colorado would’ve been a routine fly ball. When they saw that, everybody was kind of swinging for the fences.”

The Spartans never hit another home run, and their 3-0 lead in the second vanished as Costa Mesa turned it on in the bottom half of the inning.

Before the Mustangs batted and took a 4-3 lead, Coach Jim Kiefer called his team into a huddle near the dugout.

“One of the things that’s been happening lately for some reason … is our kids come out a little flat,” Kiefer said. “I just reminded them that it’s important that we’re working hard every pitch, we’re working hard every situation, and I don’t know if that woke them up.

“They finally bear down and make some things happen.”

Gabe Sanchez went two for four with a season-high four RBIs.

In Monday night’s quarterfinal game: The Mustangs lost to San Clemente, 9-4, at TeWinkle Park.

Costa Mesa will play host to Beckman today at 2 p.m. in a fifth-place semifinal.

Beach Pit Classic

First round

Costa Mesa 8, Greeley West 4

Score by Innings

Pottorff and Wilson; T. Peterson, Wedgeworth (7). W -- T. P. Peterson, 1-0. L -- Pottorff, 2-2. 2B -- Koppes (GW), Downing (GW), Pisarski (CM), Sanchez (CM), Peterson (CM). HR -- Downing (GW).