Playoff baseball: Vero Beach shakes off rough start to beat Palm Beach Central

VERO BEACH - When the Vero Beach High baseball team fell behind by four runs before taking its first swings at the plate, there was no panic among the players.

“We stayed positive,” Vero Beach first baseman Garret Srigley said. “We knew we would fight back, and that’s clearly what we did.”

With two runs in the first inning, another in the fourth, two more to take the lead in the fifth and a six-run sixth, Vero Beach erased that early deficit and went on to an 11-4 victory over visiting Palm Beach Central in the Class 7A-Region 3 quarterfinals Tuesday night in front of a big crowd that included nearly 20 former Vero Beach players.

The Broncos (13-14) stunned the home side with four runs on five hits in the first inning. William Mencho and Jabari Seguignol had run-scoring singles, Slade Wayne had an RBI double, and Luis Sousa knocked in a run with a groundout.

“It wasn’t the way we expected to start,” Vero Beach coach Bryan Rahal said. “They’re a good team, scrappy and competitive. We knew we were going to have to weather some adversity at some point in this game. We didn’t know it was going to be that first inning.”

Vero Beach began mounting its comeback in the bottom of the first. Leadoff hitter Finley Holmes walked, went to third on an errant pickoff throw and scored on Jace Romans’ double. Romans took third on Chase Wilson’s single and crossed on Srigley’s sacrifice fly.

“We just had to get the sticks going,” Srigley said. “We knew Cody would put up zeroes on the mound.”

Sophomore Cody Morgan retired 10 straight Palm Beach Central hitters from the final out in the first inning to one out in the fifth. Morgan took a shot off his back off the bat of Broncos’ leadoff hitter Diaz, but finished the inning unscathed on the mound and the scoreboard.

“He got better as the game went on,” Srigley said of Morgan, who walked one and struck out six in five innings.

“We needed zeroes to get us back in the game. He’s been a bulldog all year, the epitome of tough,” Rahal said of Morgan, who throws to his brother junior catcher Cole Morgan. “You have the sense of calmness when they are out there.”

Broncos coach Tony Gullo lamented the fact his team put up four runs in the first inning and were shutout during the final six innings.

“We can’t put up runs in just the first inning and expect to beat a good team like that,” Gullo said. “We felt like their pitcher got stronger. We were too aggressive early in counts. We lost a little bit of focus and he got stronger.”

Vero Beach’s bats still had some work to do to complete the comeback. Ashton Wetmiller was hit by a pitch and scored on an error in the fourth inning to pull Vero Beach to within a run.

In the fifth, Vero Beach took a 5-4 lead on an error and a perfect squeeze bunt by Wetmiller.

After knocking Palm Beach Central starter Charlie Houd out of the game in the sixth inning, Vero Beach piled on six runs to make it 11 unanswered.

“We collected ourselves,” Rahal said after the rough start. “We told the kids to ‘stay calm and let’s go play our game of baseball. We’ve still got a whole game ahead of us.’ They did a great job of that.”

Moving to 15-2 at home during the season, Vero Beach (22-4) advances to the regional semifinal at 7 p.m. Friday at home against sixth-seeded Wellington High, a 4-1 winner over third-seeded Park Vista High.

“Always nice to play here,” Rahal said. “It’s a great place to be.”

Palm Beach Central returns a majority of its players, graduating four seniors: Spencer Williams, William Mencho, Seth Reiser and Alex Garcia.

“They battled,” Gullo said of his team. “We couldn’t play catch the second half of the game. Too many errors.”

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Vero Beach baseball shakes bad start to advance in playoff opener