Sports: Waterford advances to New England Babe Ruth baseball semifinals

Use six-run outburst, all coming with two outs, to rout Medford (Mass.) 9-0

Augusta, Me. — A six-run outburst, all coming after there were two outs, has Waterford just a win away from playing for the New England Babe Ruth 15-year-old baseball championship.

The District 6 and Connecticut champions rode six dominant innings from pitcher Robert Zawacki and that big six-run inning in the third to defeat Medford (Mass.) 9-0 in the opening round of single-elimination play on Monday.

Waterford will play Pittsfield (Mass.), the top seed from Pool B, in today's semifinals at 4 p.m., with the winner advancing to Wednesday's noon championship game against the winner of today's other semifinal game between Concord (N.H.) and Tri-County (Me.).

Concord handed Waterford its lone loss of pool play on Sunday, 3-2.

Waterford manager Dave Laffey said Ryan O'Connell, the winning pitcher in Friday's opening day victory over host Augusta, will get the start against Pittsfield, which received a bye into the semifinals for winning its pool at 3-0.

Trevor D'Amico started the big rally with a two-out single. He scored after Zawacki and Trey Brennan reached on back-to-back errors to give Waterford a 1-0 lead before Anthony Tonucci sent Zawacki and Brennan racing home with a base hit to make it 3-0.

After Ryan Bakken singled, O'Connell delivered a two-run triple to make it 5-0, while O'Connell scored on the same play after a wild throw from the outfield to make it 6-0.

"We had some really good atbats after the (Medford) kid made that (second) error," Laffey said. "We put some balls in play, and we were down in the count, too ... 1-2, 0-2. Fortunately things worked out for us."

Waterford added three runs in the fifth when Zawacki and Bakken scored on a Medford error and Ben Jerome singled home O'Connell, who finished with two hits.

Zawacki, meanwhile, scattered three hits over six innings. He struck out two and threw only 67 pitches before Owen Coderre struck out two of the three batters he faced in the seventh to end the game, which was played in a crisp one hour, 25 minutes, according to Laffey.

"(Zawacki) did great today," Laffey said. "He threw every pitch for strike one and every pitch was around the plate.

“(Medford) was a free-swinging team, they were making contact, and we were making plays."

Tri-County won the other firstround game with a 6-5 win over Augusta.

Today's game will be streamed live on Munzingmediasports.com.