Winslow entered the 3A State tournament as the 15th overall seed and they ran into a powerful second ranked Casteel team in the opening round on Friday afternoon losing to the Colts 11-1.
The Casteel Colts came into the tournament with a regular season mark of 17-1, and they were 27-4 overall. Casteel’s pitcher Tanner Keeley and the Colt defense held Winslow to just two hits in the game. Keeley worked six innings giving up just one run on two hits with seven strikeouts.
Winslow’s top hurler Ricardo Villanueva worked 5.2 innings before reaching his pitch count limit. In his time on the hill he gave up eight runs on nine hits with four strikeouts and walked two.
Jacob Guerrero came on in relief giving up three runs on two hits with three walks.
Casteel started the scoring with two runs in the first. They added single runs in the second and third to lead 4-0. Winslow scored their only run of the game in the top of the fourth. Jalen Lyons scored the Winslow run. At the plate Lyons went 1 for 2. Solomon Setalla had the other Bulldog hit going 1 for 2 for the game as well.
The Colts stretched their lead to 6-1 with two in the fifth then ended the game under the 10-run rule with five runs in the bottom of the fifth frame.
Winslow wraps up their season with an overall record of 14-14. Casteel went on to defeat No. 7 Chino Valley 4-3 on Saturday. They will now face No. 3 Sahuarita in the semi-final round this Friday. Empire, ranked 12th, will match up with No. 1 Sabino in the other semi-final game.
Fellow East Region teams, Holbrook, Blue Ridge, Show Low and Payson were also eliminated from the tournament with Payson being the only team to reach the second round before falling to Sahuarita.
