As the warm summer breeze along Cape Cod grew cooler and the Falmouth sun set to the west of Guv Fuller Field, Aidan Donovan crossed a freshly chalked line, placed his right foot against the rubber and picked up the rock to kick off the 103rd season of Commodore baseball.
He shined in his Falmouth debut, fueling an 11-4 ‘Dore victory with three innings of one-run ball, striking out four along the way. Head coach Jack Dahm shared the same sentiment about his opening day starter.
“Aidan Donovan did a good job of really working through some situations early in the game,” said Dahm.
Donovan’s first pitch of the afternoon was an up-and-out fastball – a sample of what would constitute those early situations Dahm referred to.
17 pitches later, a pair of walks and a one-out infield single loaded the bases for Dominic Cadiz and the Firebirds as they threatened to take an early lead.
Wasn’t to be for Orleans. Donovan induced soft contact for second baseman Nick Venteicher to handle, kickstarting a critical 4-6-3 double play to help Donovan escape early treachery.
On the flip side, the ‘Dores wasted no time putting the barrel to the baseball, as Ty Kaunas led off the bottom half of the frame with a double into right-center field to spark an instantaneous rally. Gavin Greger dribbled a grounder past the reach of A.J. Beltre to score Falmouth’s leadoff batter.
After a Riley Jackson single, a pair of wild pitches from Orleans’ starter Justin LeGuernic brought Greger across home plate. J.J. Kennett drove in the Houston catcher with a groundout to second. By the end of the first, the Commodores forced 35 pitches from the left-handed arm of LeGuernic as they built a 3-0 lead.
However, the Commodores would see Orleans chip a third off their lead immediately, courtesy of a pair of singles, separated by a Kaunas error.
Michigan State’s Friday night starter would stay levelheaded through the second-inning chaos, striking out the next three Firebird batters to limit the damage to a singular run.
When reflecting on the early adversity that he ran into, Donovan attributes his levelheadedness to the idea of “controlling the controllables”, finding success in “just knowing ‘did I execute my pitch?’ I can’t worry about any of that other stuff…you execute a pitch and you can’t be too worried about it.”
The ‘Dores had a loud response in store for their adversaries, plating a pair in the second. Venteicher drew a leadoff walk, took second base following an error from Armani Raygoza on a pickoff attempt and advanced to third on a dropped third strike to Riebock. The former was the beneficiary of a double steal, the latter waltzed home to make it 5-1 after Jackson’s second opposite-field hit of the evening.
After Donovan made quick work of the Firebirds in his final inning of work, a sacrifice fly from Kennett gave the Commodores a five-run advantage at the end of three innings.
That advantage was jeopardized when Orleans found three runs in the top of the fourth.
The bottom third of the Firebirds’ order all reached base and set up Rayner Henrich and Nate Savoic to log their first RBIs of the season. The Commodore lead began to vanish, as the scoreboard read 6-4 ‘Dores in the middle of the fourth.
Despite the Firebird surge, Falmouth found three runs of its own to keep itself in the driver’s seat. Riebock singled and set the base paths ablaze, moving himself into scoring position. Kaunas’ walk put runners on the corners for Gavin Greger, who sent a soft chopper down the third base line – slow enough to score the speedy Baylor catcher.
Kaunas and Greger trotted home on a John Martinez bloop single into short center field, followed by a J.D. Stein throwing error, to make it 9-4 Commodores.
“We made the pitchers work a little bit, fouled some pitches off [with] two strikes and then we executed by moving runners,” Dahm said of his offense. “We did a really nice job and that’s the part that made it look like we’re a pretty cohesive team.”
From the fifth inning onward, both pitching staffs fell into their grooves. Brayden Toro and Aidan Keenan finished their respective outings with swift fifth innings, from which Casey Euper and Casen Murphy took over for their squads and posted two strikeouts each in the sixth.
After smooth sailings in the seventh, Murphy reached treacherous waters in the eighth after loading the bases with two outs in the inning. Dahm summoned Logan Pikur from the Commodore bullpen, and the Spartan’s senior right hander wiggled out of the jam, getting Rayner Heinrich to roll over on an outside pitch, subsequently killing the Orleans rally.
Pikur went on to claim the final three outs of Saturday’s contest, bouncing back from a Nate Savoie base hit by getting Armani Raygoza to bounce into a twin killing and ending it with a Jeremy Sheffield groundout – a euphoric watch for his Sparty teammate.
“He’s a great pitcher and got to show a little bit of what we’ve learned at MSU,” said Donovan when speaking on his counterpart. “It was great to watch him throw. He was dominant.”
The Commodores head to Brewster tomorrow, Sunday, June 13, for a matchup against the Whitecaps. It’ll be the first of back-to-back road games for the ‘Dores before they return to The Guv for a rematch against Orleans.
