Harwich falters late, loses 4-3 to Falmouth

Mariners can't capitalize on five Commodore errors
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The Harwich Mariners lost their third straight game Friday night, a 4-3 final at Whitehouse Field at the hands of the Falmouth Commodores. Harwich dropped to 10-18 on the season and has fallen to 2-13 in the month of July.

Friday night's game certainly had its fair share of quirks, probably the most unique being a nearly 20-minute delay in the top of the sixth inning after home plate umpire Marvic Gomez was injured when a foul ball hit off his hand. The delay came at an inopportune time for the Mariners, who had just allowed runners to advance to second and third base with no outs in a precarious spot with a narrow 3-2 lead.

Once play was resumed, Trent Caraway and Jayson Jones hit back-to-back sacrifice flyouts to center field that gave Falmouth a 4-3 lead that it didn't relinquish.

Harwich nearly came back in the ninth inning. After Vince Fattore (Elon) struck out to start the inning, Ryan Weingartner (Penn State) ripped a single to left field and then Cam Maldonado (Northeastern) legged out an infield single, putting the game-winning run on base with a hot bat in Cade Kurland (Florida) coming to the plate.

After taking strike one, Kurland laced a screaming line drive directly at Falmouth third baseman Caraway, who promptly caught it and quickly noticed that Weingartner was trapped after taking a big secondary lead off second base. He fired over to second where Jack Bell tapped the base and completed the game-ending double play.

As unlucky as the final play of the game was, Harwich was only in that situation because it was unable to capitalize on five errors from the Falmouth defense, as well as a costly error of its own.

Ryan DeSanto (Penn State) remained the most consistent arm in the Mariners pitching staff, pitching a shutout in his four innings of work while striking out four batters and only allowing two hits.

The Mariners will look to snap out of their skid once again on Saturday night when they travel to Hyannis to take on the Harbor Hawks at 6 p.m.