SAINTS UNAFRAID, ROLL ON FRIDAY THE 13TH
Saratoga Central Catholic plates six runs twice in 16-3 win
STILLWATER, N.Y. » Friday the 13th proved to be unlucky for the Stillwater baseball squad, committing five errors at home and giving up back-to-back six-run innings to Saratoga Central Catholic Friday afternoon in Wasaren League action.
The first six-run frame was more than enough for Saints sophomore starter Dante Marin and the second windfall of runs put the sophomore even more at ease for the win.
Marin went five innings, allowing all three earned runs early and finished with 10 strikeouts and only one walk with his balanced performance, striking out two batters in each inning Friday.
“As the game progressed I started reading and my teammates helped me out telling me what batter is up and what they did,” Dante Marin said. “So I kind of adjusted to the hitter and knew what to pitch.
“My fast ball and my curveball were helping me today,” Marin said. “They were missing (my curve ball).
Stillwater leadoff batter Luke Schultz accounted for half of the Warriors hits with his two doubles and single. On the mound, the pitcher wasn’t as lucky, giving up 10 runs with only five of
them earned as the Stillwater defense committed five errors in the contest.
The Warriors held a 2-1 lead through two innings and threatened again in the fourth, plating a run before Schultz was tagged on a rundown between first and second that allowed Zack Rychcik to score Stillwater’s final run.
“We competed solid for four, four-plus innings and when they start to string three, four hits together with a couple of miscues on our part we can’t make them stay,” Stillwater coach Marcus Harder said. “You can’t make those physical mistakes against a team like that because they’re going to capitalize. They placed the ball well, they hit the ball to where it’s pitched and they do a lot of the stuff. They do the fundamentals very, very well and we just can’t make mistakes.”
Just as Marin appeared to become more dominant as the contest wore on, so did the Saints offense, scoring six runs on our hits and two Warriors errors in the fifth and six more on seven hits in the sixth.
“We’ve got hitters up the line-up one through nine,” Saratoga Central Catholic skipper Phonsey Lambert said. “I mean, these kids are all proven hitters.
“They put a lot of time in the off season. We have the kids in a hitting league over at All-Star Academy so these kids are hitting constantly. We just need to be a little bit more consistent, we’ve got to be a little more consistent early as far as our pitch selection is. Sometimes we tend to swing at bad pitches, pop it up and it’s just because we’re an aggressive team.”
Saint junior Terel Tillman reached base five times, hitting four straight singles, scoring three times and knocking in three runs along with catcher Nick Winslow going 3-for-5 with a pair of runs scored and two RBI.
Kaden Learch had a frustrating start to his five atbat afternoon, grounding out in his first at-bat and then absolutely tattooing his next two plate appearances but without a fence at Stillwater’s American Legion field Stillwater’s Tim Buchal was able to continue backtracking in open space to reel in both blasts. Learch adjusted and struck two singles out to right field to close out his day.
“The fence is coming in at some point, but he (Tim Buchal) shagged some balls that were questionable whether they were going to be catchable,” Harder said. “I give him props for that now to pick them up and then maybe knock him down when he missed the cutoff a few times.”
The Warriors close out a stretch of four games in six days with a lot of lessons learned early on.
“We just can’t make mistakes, but we hung in there at 4-3 and we had momentum,” Harder said. “We squeeze another run across and we’re at 4-4 and it’s a different game. I’m proud of where we are, the box score doesn’t tell the story again, not at all.”
Meanwhile, the still young Saints powered through another Wasaren League opponent.
“I’m really happy with the way the defense is playing,” Lambert said. “The pitching has been outstanding in the three games and when we were scrimmaging and Florida, I could see the makings of a pretty good team here.”