YARMOUTH, Mass. — Another day, another home run off the bat of Jack Natili (Cincinnati).
Behind the Bearcat backstop, the Kettleers powered past the Y-D Red Sox in an 8-2, light-shortened win Wednesday night.
The Red Sox cracked the scoring open early with an RBI groundout in the first inning to take a 1-0 lead.
After that stutter, Ryan Buckler (Florida Atlantic) was lights out the rest of the way. Usually a bullpen piece for the Kettleers, the Massachusetts native pitched five innings on 56 pitches.
“We got a little bit more out of Buckler than we thought,” Cotuit head coach Loren Hibbs said. “If you throw it across and get three pitches in the strike zone, you got a chance.”
Despite bases loaded in back-to-back innings, the Kettleers' bats could not get runners to the plate.
Until the fifth inning.
Two hit batters and a walk loaded the bases for the red-hot Natili. On the third pitch of his at-bat, he launched a no-doubter over the wall in right field, giving the Ketts a 4-1 lead on his fifth homer in four games.
“He’s a grinder,” Hibbs said of Natili’s recent stretch. “He’s just showing off.”
Y-D threatened in the sixth and plated its second run of the game on an infield single from Chris Hacopian (Maryland) off of Ian May (UCLA). With two outs and two on, Kyle Remington (Illinois) was tapped to get Cotuit out of the jam.
Remington fanned the first batter he faced on five pitches and mowed down the Red Sox the rest of the game, throwing 2 1/3 shutout innings with four strikeouts.
“The main thing is attacking the strike zone and attacking the hitter,” Remington said of his game plan when he was called on. “You can’t get out of a big situation like that if you walk everyone.”
Even though Remington got out of a threat, the Red Sox couldn’t do the same in the seventh inning.
The first two Ketts were retired quickly by Rodney Pena (Weatherford College), but the JUCO bandit quickly found himself in a bases-loaded jam.
Luke Matthews (Kent State) gave the Ketts a 6-2 lead on an RBI single to left and advanced to second on a throwing error.
With two on, Dean West (UCLA) collected a two-run RBI single of his own to plate Matthews and Easton Winfield (portal), putting the Ketts up 8-2 and securing the team’s eighth win of the season.
After their second off-day this week, the Kettleers will return to Lowell Park at 5 p.m. Friday to host the Falmouth Commodores.
“We still need to be more efficient offensively in certain situations,” Hibbs said. “When we do that, we’re going to be really dangerous.”
