Tuesday was forgettable for the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox, meaning Wednesday had to be one to remember. The Red Sox were just nine subpar innings from having their summer packed up.

Y-D was set to play the Chatham Anglers at 4 p.m. Wednesday in Game 2 of the CCBL East Division Series with its backs against the wall. The players arrived at Red Wilson Field expecting another road-game routine before boarding the bus to Veterans Field.

With manager Scott Pickler and assistant coach Craig Gianinno, though, nothing is a given; they weren't about to let Wednesday feel like another baseball day.

Instead of sending the team to Veterans Field for batting practice, the coaches fired up the grill, cooked dozens of hot dogs and surprised all 30 players with an afternoon at Smugglers Beach.

Gianinno and Pickler got some grilling assistance from baseball operations intern Tommaso Leveroni. On the drive to Pickler's house to make the hot dogs, Gianinno asked Leveroni who would be the first player to jump into the ocean. Leveroni figured it'd be slim pickings since nobody packed a bathing suit because of the surprise. Gianinno agreed, but if anyone was going to do it, he already knew who.

"I'm putting my money on Brock [Ketelsen]," Gianinno said. "It just fits his personality. There's no way he doesn't."

Spot on, Gianinno.

The team spent the afternoon eating hot dogs, taking pictures with the President's Trophy and enjoying ice cream from Lil' Caboose. Everyone stayed dry except Ketelsen. True to Gianinno's prediction, the Stanford sophomore climbed onto a piling and launched himself into the water with a backflip.

A few hours later, Ketelsen was doing what he does best.

The 19-year-old left-hander anchored Y-D with the best start of his summer, striking out nine over 5 2/3 scoreless innings in a 1-0 victory that forced a winner-take-all Game 3. Mixing four pitches and attacking the strike zone, Ketelsen silenced the Anglers when the Red Sox needed him most.

The performance came after his worst outing of the summer on July 31. He lasted just two innings and allowed three runs, including a home run.

“I tend to have a problem with overthrowing pitches at times, and my last time out I did the exact opposite, underthrowing it,” Ketelsen said. “I was trying to mosey pitches over the plate, and when you're not competitive with each pitch, you get hit. Today, I wanted to be a little more confident with each pitch and have a little more intent behind it.”

Ketelsen's outing was a reminder of why Stanford recruited him as one of the nation's top two-way prospects. With 4,712 fans in attendance, he threw more innings than he had since high school and reached 70 pitches — his highest pitch count of the summer.

“He wasn't ripping through the pitches quite like he needed to, and that's what led to some of the shelling in his last outing,” pitching coach Eric Beattie said. “We asked him, ‘Who are you? Who do you need to be to compete at your highest ability?’ And today, I think he really put it all together and threw his pitches with great intent and worked ahead in a lot of counts.”

Ketelsen did all of that while serving as Y-D's designated hitter in the five-hole. The two-way player didn't record a hit, but Y-D prevailed. It was his first time on the Cape starting as both a pitcher and designated hitter, and Y-D needed exactly that kind of outing from him.

“It never keeps me thinking about past at-bats or past pitches. It always keeps me present,” Ketelsen said. “I put up some good swings earlier in the game. I didn’t have much to show for it, and it didn’t matter because I wasn’t carrying the thoughts of those at-bats with me in the game. It’s easy to feel like you’re having a bad day, but when I’m pitching and hitting, I have no time to think.”

Learning to adapt to failure became one of Ketelsen's biggest lessons during the spring at Stanford and the summer with Y-D. During his preseason grind with the Cardinal, Ketelsen fell short of expectations at both the plate and on the mound for the Power Four program. He saw limited at-bats, and while he logged innings on the mound, his 7.39 ERA over 31 innings wasn't up to his standards.

That all changed when he stepped foot on Cape Cod. He finished the regular season as one of the Cape's most disciplined hitters, drawing 21 walks (tied for sixth in the CCBL) while batting .304 with two outs. Pitching-wise, his numbers have been just as impressive. Including the playoffs, Ketelsen owns a 1.85 ERA over 24 1/3 innings with 33 strikeouts.

“I knew I was going to get beat both on the mound and at the plate on the Cape, but that's baseball,” Ketelsen said. “I definitely do think that I was putting a lot of pressure on myself at Stanford. Out here I felt a little more carefree. Just go out there and be who you are. This summer's been good for me to deal with failure. At Stanford I let it beat me up, but out here I’m using it as motivation. I've seen strides in my game because of that. I’m excited to get back to Stanford and compete for a starting spot again.”

It's almost like carefree was exactly what Pickler and Gianinno hoped to create when they decided to send the ballclub to the beach. Ketelsen is mature on the mound, but it's his personality that teammates gravitate toward off it. If turning 19 two weeks ago and being the only player to jump into the ocean doesn't convince you of his youthful spirit, he also ate two whole pizzas from Cape Flats before the beach. After the game, he stopped at Lil' Caboose for more ice cream and ordered the "Brockstar," a flavor named after him.

Five, yes, five scoops. Three of Graham Central Station, one Banana Graham and one Butter Crunch, all stacked on a waffle cone.

Y-D hopes to keep stacking wins, and if it does, Ketelsen will remain one of the biggest reasons why.

“He’s grown up in front of us,” Pickler said. “He failed a little bit here, and he didn't have the year he wanted at school. It was a lot of tough luck, which is most of life, but he handled it really well. It's unbelievable how much he’s grown as a person and a player.”