CBA edges Ballston Spa in extras
Brothers score in top of the 8th to win 5-4
BALLSTON SPA, N.Y. » Ballston Spa baseball took a hard-fought loss against CBA, 5-4 in an extra-inning affair.
Scotties starter, Gerodan Buffoline, gave up three runs — two earned — five hits, with four strikeouts and four walks in six innings.
“It was a dog fight,” Ballston Spa coach Curtis Nobles said. “We expected that coming in, pressure situations we normally thrive in and some of our young guys got exposed today. Some of our seniors stepped up. We had a couple clutch situations where we put bat on ball with two strikes on us and gave us a chance, but then towards the bottom of the lineup we froze up a little bit.”
CBA took an early lead in the second inning when Buffoline walked the first two batters to set CBA up with runners on first and second and nobody out. CBA scored one in the inning off an RBI single from Nick Marola to make it 1-0. CBA put another run across the plate in the third and fifth innings to give the visitors a 3-0 lead heading into the bottom of the fifth.
The Scotties fought back, scoring four runs off an RBI sac fly by Jake Durfee, an RBI single from Jared Winkle and a two-RBI base hit from Luke Gold.
CBA tied it 4-4 in the seventh after an error and relief pitcher Jake Fox hit a batter. Nick Melillio hit an infield single to load the bases and a passed ball allowed the runner from third to come home and tie the game.
The game headed to extras after the Scotties failed to capitalize with the bases loaded and one out in the bottom of the seventh. A pop out and a fly out pushed the game into extra innings.
“We had a play on and it wasn’t communicated properly and that happens in a game as well, when pressure starts to apply to some kids, just miscommunication,”
Nobles said.
CBA scored the winning run in the top of the eighth. Marola provided the RBI off a double to deep left field that bounced off the wall.
Ballston Spa was unable to put anything together in the bottom of the inning as Jason Rubilotta finished out the game for CBA to earn the win.
Nobles said that Ballston Spa managed to stay in the game because they adapted as the game went on and played to the final out.
“We try to play 21 outs, anything can happen,” Nobles said. “We made the proper adjustments coming into inning four and five. This is a game of ups and downs and today we had more downs than ups. We will see another day.”
Nobles said looking forward, the Scotties will still be competitive and the team needs to take care of key opportunities.
“I think we are going to be okay,” Nobles said. “I think we just have to come up more in clutch situations and find ways to win like we have in the past. We have come back in games like these three or four times, but today wasn’t our day and that’s baseball.”