Southeast baseball’s strange postseason run ends in region quarters

Southeast High School had two options with its season on the line and a potential pitching decision that could determine the Class 5A-Region 3 quarterfinal matchup.

Alex Quinones has been the Seminoles’ ace all season long. He’s also their most reliable fielder, a senior shortstop and team captain with the capability to conceal some of the Seminoles’ defensive shortcomings.

“It was something we juggled with,” head coach Brett Andrzejewski said. “We talked with Alex beforehand.”

Southeast settled on Kobby Garcia on the mound and Quinones in the field.

Andrzejewski figured Lake Placid’s penchant for making contact would make defense paramount Tuesday at Southeast High School and it was, although the Dragons still took advantage of defensive gaffes to win 8-2. They advance to take on Englewood Lemon Bay in next Tuesday’s region semifinals.

The Seminoles (10-17) took an unlikely route to a home game in the opening round of the region postseason. After winning a play-in game, the Seminoles jumped to a nine-run lead against top-seeded St. Pete Lakewood before watching it nearly all disappear during the final inning of a one-run victory. The Seminoles never played a Class 5A-District 11 championship game — Bayshore forfeited because of a pitch-count violation in its 5A-11 semifinal.

So the Seminoles, who won fewer than 10 games during the regular season, began the region playoffs at home against Lake Placid, another team with a record well below .500. A calculated gamble, such as bringing Quinones out of the bullpen, was the sort of risk the Seminoles needed to pay off to keep its run alive.

The move backfired. Garcia was solid enough for two innings, allowing one earned run, but Southeast’s defense struggled even with Quinones at shortstop. An error in the first inning let the Dragons (9-13) score one unearned run. Two errors during the second sent two more unearned runs home. Another error at the start of the third brought a final unearned run home. By the time Garcia left the game three batters into the third inning, Lake Placid had a 5-0 lead with four unearned runs.

“We thought they would be a team that would put the ball in play a lot, which they did,” Andrzejewski said, “and we were just a step or two off on a lot of those ground balls.”

Quinones pitched the final five innings. The deficit by then, though, was too much even for the lately potent Seminoles offense, which had scored at least seven runs in three of its past four games and nine during both of its district-tournament games.

The Seminoles managed four hits in seven innings against Sam Callahan. Both of the their runs were unearned after the pitcher’s fifth-inning error let both senior Kareem Lewis and sophomore Austin Jenkins race home.

“He hit his spots, definitely,” said Quinones, who went 1 for 3 with a walk as the No. 3 hitter. “He knew exactly where he wanted to put it and he put it there, and that caused us to swing at pitches that were outside of the strike zone.”

This story was originally published May 9, 2017 at 10:56 PM with the headline "Southeast baseball’s strange postseason run ends in region quarters."