There won’t be any fear of the unknown when the Bayfield High School baseball team opens the 2014 postseason Saturday at home.
The Wolverines will play La Junta at 10 a.m. Saturday at Bayfield Middle School in the opening game of the Colorado High School Activities Association Class 3A District 4 tournament.
BHS (16-3) is the fifth overall seed, while La Junta (9-10) is seeded 28th.
No. 12 University will face No. 21 Olathe on the other side of the bracket at 12:30 p.m.
The winners will play for the district championship at 3 p.m.
“I was pretty happy with it. We stayed at No. 5, so we were happy that we didn’t drop down any further from the points they use,” BHS head coach Jonathon Qualls said Friday. “We haven’t played any of the teams that are in our district; I don’t really know too much about them.”
The most important thing to know about La Junta is that when the Tigers beat teams, they hammer them.
La Junta outscored its opponents 159-69 in 19 games but finished below .500 in the regular season. The Tigers cracked double digits eight times this year and beat the two teams’ only common opponent, Monte Vista, 23-2 on April 29.
“La Junta seems like a pretty tough team for what they’re seeded,” Qualls said. “They’ve played with a lot of good teams this year.”
They only lost one game by more than two runs.
Elias Altamirano leads La Junta with a .549 batting average, 25 runs batted in and the team’s only home run.
The Tigers hit .323.
Their pitching staff has a 2.58 earned-run average with 157 strikeouts.
Cody Knoell is the ace of the staff with a 4-2 record, 1.62 ERA and 71 strikeouts.
BHS will respond with a mix of experience and youth.
The Wolverines also hosted districts last season and return four starters from that team.
“I think we have a really good group of kids, so I’m not necessarily worried about playing better teams,” Qualls said. “I’m excited about it.”
A .424 team batting average and 2.51 team ERA has helped BHS go undefeated against the state of Colorado so far this year.
The Wolverines’ only losses have come against the junior varsity programs from New Mexico Class 4A Farmington and Piedra Vista.
BHS has hit 13 home runs this year, seven of them from sophomore Zane Phelps, which is tied for the 3A lead. Phelps leads 3A with 37 RBIs and leads the team with a .575 batting average.
Matthew Knickerbocker (.516) also averages a hit every other at bat, while five Wolverines are hitting above .400.
“Our hitting has been good all year, and our pitching and fielding have been good the last four or five weeks,” Qualls said. “We’ll have to keep that up and not fall back into walking guys and making errors.”
Bayfield’s defensive resurgence has allowed them to rattle off 11 consecutive wins with three shutouts.
The depth of the Wolverines’ pitching staff allows Qualls to not worry about potentially playing two games so close together.
BHS has used 10 pitchers this season, and Knickerbocker and Trey Lange are tied for the team lead with five wins.
“Over the last four weeks, they’ve been getting better every week,” Qualls said. “Hopefully they’re ready to play the best ball of the season.”
kgrabowski@durangoherald.com
