One day after clinching their first conference title in 13 years, the Pirate baseball team traveled to Cerritos for a non-conference tilt making up a rained out game from February. TJ Foreman and Zane Chittenden each had a pair of hits ad Baylor Tovar had an RBI but Ventura (25-15, 13-7) fell to the Falcons, 4-1. Chittenden also started on the mound, giving up three runs, one earned, over four innings of work.
The Pirates were not sharp early in the game, giving up a home run in the first, then yielding two unearned runs in the third inning.
Offensively, VC could not get the clutch hit. They had runners on third base in four of the first five innings, and had a runner in scoring position in the sixth, to no avail.
Ventura finally got on the board in the top of the eighth inning. With two outs, Junior Sandoval reached base on an error before Tovar hit a triple to knock him home.
The Pirates gave up one more run in the bottom half of the frame to fall by a final score of 4-1.
On the strength of their WSC title, the Pirates have qualified for the CCCAA Southern California Regional Playoffs for the first time in a decade. Seedings will be announced over the weekend with the play-in games beginning Tuesday April 30. First round best-of-three series will be played on May 3-4.