The Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox beat the Chatham Anglers 7-3 to become the first Cape Cod Baseball League team, in 2026, to reach 20 wins. A combination of bats cracking across Y-D’s lineup and Connor Hamilton (Vanderbilt University) returning to, and dominating in the starting pitcher role earned Y-D the victory that improved them to a 20-4-1 record this season.
In his first start after his bullpen outing against Bourne last Friday, Hamilton came out as a strikeout machine against Chatham. Over five innings, the right-hander recorded seven strikeouts, and even when he wasn't putting away Chatham’s hitters, he was no friend to their offense. He only allowed two hits, one earned run, and one walk, and left the game with a 2.33 ERA.
His ERA dropped, his outing was lengthier than usual, and he was striking out batters with the intensity that he was last year at Vanderbilt, where he averaged 9.9 strikeout per nine.
Hamilton credited this outing’s success to his ability to stay relaxed and have fun on the diamond, something he feels like he relearned how to do in his recent bullpen outing. He explained that he feels more pressure to pitch well as a starter than as a reliever because he wants to start the game off on a positive note. So, he channelled his inner-reliever self in this start, which involves feeling less pressure and enjoying the outing. Evidently, this correlated with success.
“When you’re coming out of the pen, you’re already going into a game. There’s no real emphasis to start the game off,” Hamilton said. “So I kind of just went out there with the same mentality, like okay yeah, let’s go out there and have fun.”
Hamilton’s “fun” outing was followed by a brief relief appearance from Owen Birchard (Bryant University), who allowed one earned run in just ⅔ of an inning. Brisen Tweedy (University of South Florida) followed for the final 3 and ⅓ innings where he allowed only two hits, one earned run, and one walk with three strikeouts.
Offensively, the seven runs were scored from hits across the lineup. Phoenix Call (University of California-Los Angeles) went 2-for-5 with two RBI. His bat made a slow start to the season, given his .209 batting average and .269 slug, but his performance in this game showed signs of an offensive breakout for the outfielder.
Reid Howard (University of Virginia) also had offensive success, as he went 2-for-4 to improve to a .280 average and a .819 OPS. Other contributors included Kevin Takeuchi (University of Southern California), Lucas Franco (Texas Christian University), and Brock Ketelsen (Stanford University) who went 1-for-4, as well as Cole Hansen who went 1-for-3.
Y-D will look to improve to a two-game win streak on Wednesday, July 15 against Wareham, at home, at 5:00 pm EDT.
