The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
Sherrill takes on HelmuthIngalls
UTICA, N.Y. » Sherrill Post 230 opened the American Legion District 5 baseball season with back-to-back losses during the first week of June.
Following those two early losses, Barry VanDreason’s squad responded by going 8-3 over its next eleven games to work its way back toward the top of Navy Division standings.
On Saturday, Post 230 made it nine wins in the last 12 games, shutting out HelmuthIngalls 4-0 to guarantee a spot in postseason play.
“A little different than when we played Utica. Utica was a battle the other night. The kids really responded,” VanDreason said. “We have a good pitching staff. We might not have hit the ball as well as we’ve been, but we’ve got guys down the lineup that came in today that started up the rally...We have a nice team.”
Logan McClelland had another strong start for Post 230, striking out five batters across four scoreless innings for the win. Sherrill’s bullpen was equally impressive. Hard-throwing Sam DiGeorge struck out three in two scoreless frames, and Andrew Wuest closed out the seventh to preserve the collective twohit shutout.
Thomas Labayewski was hit with the loss for HelmuthIngalls, allowing four runs in six innings while striking out three.
TJ Horodnick went 2-for-2 with a pair of doubles for Sherrill in the win. Lukas Albro finished 2-for-3 at plate with
an RBI, and Tyler Rotach added a triple on 2-for-3 hitting for Post 230 in the victory.
Sherrill went up 1- 0 in the bottom of the first after McClelland worked a scoreless top half of the inning. With one man down, Tyler Rotach tripled and then scored on a Zach Nell sacrifice fly to center.
After Helmuth-Ingalls put its leadoff runner, Labayewski, on via an error in the top of the second stanza, McClelland set down three straight batters on strikeouts to close the frame.
The Sherrill bats gave the pitching staff some breathing roomin the bottomhalf of them fourth. After Jorden Barlow took reached on a hit-by-pitch with one out, Horodnick doubled to put runners on second and third. Vinny Leibl brought Barlow home on a grounder to the left side of the infield for a 2- 0 lead. With two outs and Horodnick on third, Ryan Shantal singled on a sharply hit ball toward third base to bring Horod- nick in for a 3-0 lead. Albro capped the three-run inning with an RBI single of his own in the next at-bat to score Shantal and give the pitching staff some cushion to work with.
DiGeorge and Wuest did not appear to need it, however. DiGeorge allowed a pair of Helmuth-Ingalls runners, Josh Wagner and Tanner Deveans, to reach with two outs in the fifth but came back to strikeout the final batter to get out of the inning. DiGeorge flirted with trouble again in the bottom of the sixth, putting runners on first and second with nobody out, but once again, the righty settled down to retire the next three batters he face, two on strikeouts, to escape the jam.
Wuest spelled DiGeorge in the final inning, retiring three of the four batters he faced to preserve the win and the shutout.
Sherrill improves to 9-5 in District 5 Legion play following the victory, and with two regular season games remaining before playoffs open, attention turns toward closing strong and locking up a favorable seed.
Said VanDreason, “We
want to win out.”