Gate City's late-season magic and year ends with back-to-back losses to Logan in NUL semifinals

Even after everything, this really felt like the year for Gate City.

But instead, the Grays still found themselves in an all too familiar and unforunate place − gone in the semifinal round.

After going up 1-0 Thursday, they dropped a winner-take-all Game 3 Northern Utah League semifinal series, 13-10, to the Logan Royals Saturday night on the road. It’s the fourth straight year that Gate City has lost in the semifinals.

“Logan just came out and unfortunately, played better than us,” Gate City head coach Rhys Pope said. “We weren’t able to hold off their offense I think was the big thing. I don’t think we necessarily did anything wrong. Logan is just a good team.”

Even in the loss Thursday, the defending NUL champions still put up 13 runs. They then totaled 29 of them over the next two games alone. Four of those came right out of the gate Saturday.

The No. 4 Grays (15-14) fell in a 4-0 hole to the top-seeded Royals after two innings. They then faced an 8-5 deficit heading into the top of the sixth.

But Gate City answered back both times.

Tyler Vance jumpstarted a five-run third inning with his RBI ground ball single to right field. JD Gunderson (single) and Josh Myers (double) both then drove in runs before Slayder Watterson handed the Grays’ their first lead of the game on a line-drive double to center field.

Brayden Pieper had a line drive RBI double to center field himself before Slayder’s older brother, Easton, tied the game at 8-8 on another line drive double to center field.

“The guys left absolutely everything on the field,” Pope said. “Our players didn’t walk off that field thinking, ‘Man, I could have given it a little bit extra.’ I think we left it all out on the field as a team, and as a coach, that’s what you want.

“I thought we gave it absolutely our all and our best shot. But the baseball gods wanted Logan to win I guess. That’s just the way baseball goes sometimes.”

It certainly seemed like it.

Luck was definitely not on the Grays’ side during the bottom half of that sixth inning. Trem Tolman opened it up by plunking the very first batter he faced. A single, three consecutive walks, a double and another hit-by-pitch followed. It all of a sudden gave Logan a commanding 13-8 advantage with Gate City down to its final three outs.

The Grays went out swinging with a pair of singles and runners at the corners to start the seventh and final inning, though. They made things a little interesting by scoring on an error and a fielder’s choice off of Cole Pulliam’s groundout. But the two-out rally ended after Pieper struck out after fouling off three straight pitches.

Vance led the way with three of the team’s 12 hits. Easton, Slayer, Gunderson and Myers all finished with two hits apiece for the Grays, whose 15 wins are the fewest in four seasons.

This was largely due to a rocky 2-6 start and just four wins in the month of June. They didn’t win their first series or record back-to-back wins until the end of June.

Gate City didn’t get above. 500 until the penultimate game of the regular season. But it racked off seven wins in eight games before losing the last two to the Royals.

“I’m extremely proud. We didn’t give up,” Pope said. “There’s teams out there who after a shaky or a rough start would have just rolled over and gone, ‘I guess this is what it’s going to be.’ But we never did that.

“So I’m extremely proud of the way the guys fought back over the course of the whole season. I mean we still won more games in the postseason than we lost. It’s just unfortunately, we lost back-to-back games. So I’m just extremely proud of this group and I’m excited for what the future holds.”