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Prep baseball: Farmington tops Layton 9-4, holds on to Takemori’s hot start

By Bob Judson - Special to the Standard-Examiner | Apr 29, 2022

FARMINGTON — A cursory glance at the final score of Farmington’s 9-4 victory over Layton does not begin to tell the story of this Region 1 baseball game Friday.

Phoenix starting pitcher Caleb Takemori was sailing along with a two-hit shutout through six innings when he was replaced by a reliever in the top of the seventh.

Layton promptly plated four runs, batted around, and left the bases loaded before the Phoenix finally recorded the last out.

Prior to the Lancer rally, Takemori and his defense had been dominant. He struck out one and walked two while not allowing a runner past second base, executing the Phoenix game plan to near perfection.

“Every time warming up in the bullpen, I run through game scenarios so when I get out to the mound, nothing’s changed,” Takemori said. “Try to throw strikes as much as possible and get ahead in the count. As a team we try to stay under 13 pitches an inning; I try to let the batters hit the pitches that I want them to so my defense can work for me.”

Deuces were wild early as Farmington (13-8, 9-6 Region 1) scored two in each of the first, second and fifth innings to build a 6-0 lead.

Farmington senior Park Romney then hit a two-run triple to the right-centerfield gap in the sixth inning, making it 8-0, a hit that turned out to be a big deal when Layton threatened in the seventh.

“I just want to bury the other team so they have no chance of winning,” Romney said. “I felt like the past couple of games, I’ve been keeping my hands more inside the baseball and it kind of contributed to my hits on the right side today. I’m definitely seeing the ball really well.”

Romney finished with three hits — including two triples — three runs scored and the two RBIs. Takemori also had three base knocks, which means he got more hits than he yielded to the Lancer batters.

The Lancers (10-12, 7-8) had come from seven runs down to win on Wednesday and set up Friday’s rubber match but found themselves in too big of a hole to climb out this time.

“We gave ourselves a chance. We hit the ball hard that last inning, finally,” Layton coach Robert Ferneau said. “We just have to have better approaches at the plate and compete a little bit harder on the mound and in the field. We didn’t early.”

Carsten McNeely and Carter Day had RBI singles for Layton in the seventh, but it was too little, too late.

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