Mountaineers stun Riverhawks behind Sheaffer’s complete-game gem

Entering the seventh inning, Rainier Mountaineers pitcher Peyton Sheaffer was up to 80 pitches and had no desire to take a seat for the seventh inning with a 5-1 lead against Toledo Wednesday, April 16.

He had never pitched a complete game before. It didn’t matter.

“It definitely started to get tired,” Sheaffer said of his right arm.

“It was tough, but the defense came in and helped me, so that was nice.”

Sheaffer pitched seven innings of one-run ball, striking out eight batters and allowing only five hits in a 5-2 Rainier victory at Toledo. The Mountaineers were led by three runs in the third and two more in the fourth, and the defense and their ace righty did the rest.

The victory was a step in the right direction for a Rainier team with lots of youth and a 2-8 record entering Wednesday’s game, and it marked Rainier’s first win over Toledo since March 14, 2019, snapping a seven-game skid.

“I’m hoping it’s that last step. The first stretch of the year was the tough teams on our schedule. We played Napavine super tough, so we’ve shown ourselves that we can play with anyone,” Rainier coach Justin Gurnsey said. “It’s just the question of, do we play up to the level of competition or do we play down? We actually set the tone today.”

Toledo brought the first runner across home plate in the second inning as Austin Reed bunted to score Nico Acosta. Each of the first three Mountaineers batters reached base safely to start the third, with Kaden Goodman driving in the tying run on a line-drive knock to center field.

Despite batting just .154 coming into the contest, Hunter Howell stepped up to the plate and roped a 2-2 pitch to right field for a two-run, go-ahead double. The Mountaineers added two more in the fourth thanks to an RBI single by Wyatt Cughan for his first RBI of the season and a RBI double by Yazama Gurnsey.

“That’s what we’ve been missing most this year is that timely hit. We get some base runners on and then we just miss the ball, and today we put the ball in play and good things happen,” Justin Gurnsey said.

The Riverhawks brought home their second run while down to their last out of the night but failed to bring in another as a runner was thrown out for the final out. Sheaffer finished with 104 pitches and 62 strikes in the complete-game effort.

“I was thinking that the pitch count was getting up there and wondering if we should put someone else in to close, and (Peyton) told me, ‘No, I’m gonna go,’” Gurnsey said. “He had that mentality. He was a bulldog. He just kept pounding the zone, and our defense supported him.”

In each of Toledo’s three losses, the Riverhawks have scored just two runs. Head coach Mack Gaul said the team’s approach at the plate Wednesday was “awful.”

“(Sheaffer) didn’t have anything that was gonna blow by us, and we were out in front on balls in the dirt and watching fastballs go by down the middle,” he said.

“It’s something we can’t have in the future if we want to make a state run.”

Rainier and Toledo met again Friday, April 18, with the home team Mountaineers losing 17-16 in extra innings. Rainier recorded 18 hits in the back-and-forth affair. Unfortunately eight fielding errors helped Toledo stay in the game; the Riverhawks eventually grabbed the winning run in the eighth. Toledo scored their 17 runs off just 10 hits, while committing only one error of their own.

The Mountaineers (4-9, 4-9 Central 2B League) followed their heartbreaking loss to Toledo with a massive 25-6 win at Winlock on Monday, April 21. They played Winlock again at home on Wednesday, April 23, but results were not available before presstime.

Rainier finishes the week at Morton-White Pass on Friday, April 25, at 3 p.m.

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Jacob Farmer contributed reporting to this story.