The Harwich Mariners clinched the third seed in the 2024 Cape Cod Baseball League playoffs with a thundering 15-7 win over the Brewster Whitecaps Sunday evening. Eleven runs between the fourth and fifth innings carried the Mariners to an easy victory in their final game of the regular season.

After the Whitecaps put up a five-spot in the top of the fourth inning, the Harwich offense showed no panic and aimed to answer back with a crooked number of its own.

Macon Winslow (Duke) kicked the inning off with a bloop single over the head of Brewster shortstop Drew Faurot. The Mariners then walked three straight times, with the final walk from Sam McNulty (Boston College) forcing in the first run of the inning.

Now one of the Mariners' hottest hitters, Aden Robbins (Seton Hall), came to the plate. Robbins grounded into what could have been a tailor-made double play, but a bobble from Faurot at shortstop allowed him to make it to first. After some funky baserunning from the runners already on base, Tommy Barth (Kansas) was tagged out at third, but Ryan Weingartner (Penn State) had already come in to score, which made the game 6-5.

Danny Dickinson (LSU) followed that up with the Mariners' fourth walk of the inning, at which point Brewster manager Jamie Shevchick decided to pull his starter, Parker Detmers, and bring in Zach Johnston.

Unfortunately for the Whitecaps, Johnston kept the walk train rolling, giving a free bag to the next batter, Aden Hill (Maryland), which scored McNulty to tie the game while keeping the bases loaded.

Wilson Weber (Oregon State) was next in line, and instead of walking like most of his predecessors had done in the inning, he had more damage planned.

Weber jumped all over the third pitch he saw from Johnston and hit a towering fly ball to deep left field that barely cleared the fence, a grand slam that broke the doors wide open for Harwich.

Johnston picked up the final two outs of the inning, but the dam was broken and Harwich went on to score four more runs in the fifth inning to put the game out of reach for Brewster.

The Mariners finished the night with just 10 hits, but all of the hits did damage as they capitalized on the eight walks from the Brewster pitching staff.

"We took advantage of some errors and some walks and got some big hits," Harwich manager Steve Englert said. "It was great to get those crooked numbers."

The Mariners finish their season with a record of 16-24, a losing record, but one that doesn't show the improvement they made in the final few weeks of the season. After a tough first three and a half weeks in July in which the team posted a 2-17 record over a 19-game span, the Mariners finished the final eight games of the season with a 6-2 record with marquee wins over Chatham, Cotuit, Wareham and Orleans. Their final two weeks paired with a strong 8-5 start to the season in June kept them in playoff contention, which they head into with a ton of momentum.

"Just get in, anything can happen when you get in," Englert said. "The resiliency on these kids, I'm just extremely proud of them. We had that tough stretch and they just kept grinding and it was just a matter of time. We finally found it and it's starting to click, hopefully we can make a run here."

Chatham will be the first obstacle in the Mariners' path toward a CCBL Championship, a team Harwich went 2-3 against in the regular season, most recently a 5-4 loss this past Saturday night.

"They're a good team, they're a good hitting team," Englert said of his teams' first-round opponent. "Its going to be a dog fight all the way in for the rest of the way. Everybody is good down here, you get in the playoffs, it's a whole new season."

First pitch at Veterans Field on Tuesday night is scheduled for 7 p.m.