The No. 2 seed Cotuit Kettleers and No. 4 seed Bourne Braves advanced to the Cape Cod Baseball League’s best-of-three West Division Championship Series with a trip to the Championship on the line. Read below for a roundup of each game from the series:
Game 1
The game was won when… Ryan Buckler (Florida Atlantic) entered the game in the top of the fifth inning.
The Braves were down 3-1 and threatening with two men on and no outs in a gritty matchup against the Kettleers. Coach Mike Roberts pulled starter Cullen McKay (Coastal Carolina), who had set the tone with four solid innings of one-run ball, and relieved him with Ryan Buckler, who only had six innings of experience with the Ketts. After a sacrifice bunt by Chris Stanfield (Auburn) to score Bourne’s second and last run of the game, Buckler, with the assistance of the Cotuit defense, was stout.
Buckler didn’t score any of the Ketts' runs, the offense was led by Jarren Advincula (California) and Brandon Compton (Arizona State), but effectively shut down a hot Bourne team that came into the contest with a .299 team batting average in the last 10 games. The Kettleers' relief pitching has been one of its pitfalls as of recently, letting opponents pile on unanswered runs in later innings.
Buckler, a local Marston Mills native, stood his ground, shoving five innings of shutout ball and allowing only one hit while striking out four and picking up the win.
“Oh, [the momentum is] awesome,” Buckler said. “Only one more till the championship and we go from there. It’s looking good for us right now and we are playing well.”
Stat to know: 4
Four is the total number of pitchers used between the two teams. Bourne and Cotuit relied only on a starter and one reliever in their division series-opening game. Each team only using one reliever is a boon for their pitching staffs that are either taxed or full of new and untested arms.
Bourne head coach Scott Landers and pitching coach Kevin Curtin have been pretty efficient all season about using a minimal number of arms in each contest. Cotuit on the other hand has been a bit more volatile, especially with the sheer number of arms that have passed through the Kettleer bullpen this summer. With many arms at the beginning of the summer being draft eligible, Roberts has had to bring in a plethora of surplus arms, leading to more pitchers per contest.
The upside of both teams only using two of their arms is that for the next one, and maybe two games, they will have mostly all of their staff at their disposal to try and make it to the Cape Cod League Championship Series.
Player of the game: Ryan Buckler and Brandon Compton
Buckler’s stellar relief outing has already been detailed, so a secondary player of the game for Cotuit is Brandon Compton (Arizona State). The outfielder owned three of Cotuit’s five hits, and while he didn’t push across an RBI, he was crucial for putting pressure on the Bourne pitching staff.
Compton was 3-for-4 with a double, a run scored and four total bases. Two of the Kettleers' three runs were on a wild pitch and a passed ball, both of which required a Cotuit player on base to push the run across. Even more than that, Compton has shown up for the Kettleers all season, ranking fifth in the lead in batting average (.331) — the 2024 CCBL batting champion was his teammate Advincula – fifth in homers (six) and second in RBI (30).
Quote of the night:
“We’ve got a lot of veterans on the mound and that’s what we needed, we’ve got guys throwing strikes and mixing up pitches,” Compton said. “I feel like our bats will take care of whoever is on the mound for the other team. If we are getting strikes thrown and mixing speeds, I feel like we have a good shot.”
This article will be updated following the conclusion of Game 2 on Aug. 8
(Photograph by Aidan Conrad)
