Schooners beat Newport, clinch NECBL playoff bid

Winkel home run in the ninth lifts Mystic past Newport 7-4

Newport, R.I. — Chris Winkel's tworun homer capped a three-run outburst in the ninth inning as the Mystic Schooners clinched the final New England Collegiate Baseball League playoff berth with a 7-4 victory over the Newport Gulls on Wednesday night.

The Schooners (22-21), under firstyear manager Rob Bono of Waterford, finish the regular season today at Sanford and begin the postseason Friday. Mystic, the No. 3 seed in the Southern Division, will travel to No. 2 Ocean State.

The Gulls (21-23), who would have eliminated Mystic with a win, tied the game in the bottom of the eighth, but Anthony Cruz (Quinnipiac) gave the Schooners a 5-4 lead with a pinch-hit sacrifice fly to score Brett Rodriguez (Wofford), and Winkel (UConn) followed with his blast, his eighth home run of the season.

Winkel finished 3-for-5 with two runs and two RBI while Rodriguez and Steve Barmakian (George Washington) added two hits apiece.

New York-Penn League

• Wenceel Perez delivered a twoout, two-run single in the seventh inning to lift the Connecticut Tigers to a 3-1 win over the Vermont Lake Monsters at Dodd Stadium. Carlos Guzman (2-2) pitched five shutout innings for the Tigers (22-21) to earn the win while Yaya Centouf pitched 1.2 no-hit innings to earn his eighth save.

SEC 16-18 Babe Ruth

• Waterford scored a pair of runs in the top of the seventh to rally past Groton 6-5 Tuesday and win the Southeastern Connecticut 16-18 Babe Ruth Championship Series in three games. All three games were decided by a run and the winning runs of each game were scored in the winners' final at bat. Jordon Hancock and JJ Brennan began Waterford's comeback with base hits before Clancy Susi doubled both players home.

Jake Huff's two-run single and an RBI by Ed Ryan staked Waterford to a 3-0 lead in the third before Groton tied it with three in the fifth on a tworun double by Derek Pelletier and Phil Warner's RBI single. Waterford regained the lead in the top of the sixth when Eddie Aledia singled and pinch runner JR McBride stole second and scored on an error, but Groton scored twice in the bottom of the inning on Kyle Egan's leadoff walk, a pair of Waterford errors and a wild pitch.

Reliever Bret Wood was the winning pitcher, allowing one hit over the final two innings and no earned runs after Huff pitched five solid innings.

Pelletier and Jordan Lowell pitched for Groton, combine for 12 strikeouts while allowing only five hits. Warner had two hits for Groton.