PUEBLO – This game between two top-10 Class 4A baseball teams lived up to the hype.
And the main attraction was Windsor pitcher Jake Greenwalt.
Greenwalt fired a complete-game six hitter propelling the Wizards to a 3-1 win over Pueblo East Friday in a non-league game at Hobbs Fields at the Runyon Sports Complex.
Windsor’s Jake Greenwalt. (Tracy Renck/CHSAANow.com)
“It was an intense game and it was fun,” said the 6-foot-1, 170-pound Greenwalt, who also fanned six batters. “Usually I will be shaky the first two innings and then I will get all my pitches down and start working, but I wasn’t spotting my fastball like I was supposed to.
“My changeup is usually my No. 3 pitch and (Friday) it was easily my No. 1 or No. 2 pitch.”
Windsor, which is ranked No. 10 in the latest CHSAANow.com poll, improved to 8-2. East, currently No. 7, dropped to 7-2 and saw its four-game winning streak snapped.
“They came in and beat us at our place last year and we know they play hard for seven innings,” Windsor coach Brad Deal said. “Our kids were looking forward to playing a good opponent, and I thought our kids did a good job.
“Jake Greenwalt was pretty tough on the mound. He had a good game and kept us in the game. It’s not about how many hits you get, it is when you get them and we got a couple at the right time.”
Windsor took a 2-0 advantage after scoring a run in the third inning, and added another run in the top of the seventh. The Wizards manufactured their runs thanks to six hits and four Eagle errors.
“It felt like a playoff atmosphere and we have a good rivalry with Wizard,” veteran East coach D.J. Latino said. “They are a great program and we have a lot of respect for them and the game came down to execution and we didn’t execute as well as they did, and they were better than us (Friday).”
East’s lone run came on an RBI single by Andrew Vigil in the fourth frame.
“My guys made some big plays on defense for me,” said Greenwalt, who transferred from Fossil Ridge to Windsor this year. “We lost to Centaurus (March 31, 8-7) and that kind of shut us down a little bit and then we beat Silver Creek (4-0, April 1), and now we got this big win against East (Friday).”
Pueblo East’s Josh Tellez. (Tracy Renck/CHSAANow.com)
Deal is optimistic this victory will give his team a jolt.
“Our kids really came together and played for each other and that was a big piece in this victory for us,” Deal said.
East pitcher Josh Tellez, a sophomore, also threw a complete game with two strikeouts. He said he knew his team had its chances.
“We had some mistakes and we couldn’t come through,” Tellez said. “I pitched how I wanted and I got a lot of groundball outs. Windsor is a really good team and we are going to have to know next time we have to have the same energy they had, especially down the stretch.”