The Hyannis Harbor Hawks defeated the Wareham Gatemen 2-0 in their last regular season game at Clem Spillane field on a rainy Sunday night.
With the win, the Gatemen’s season comes to a close, and the Harbor Hawks will face the Cotuit Kettleers in the Division Series of the playoffs.
“The boys played really well, the pitching was excellent, defense was solid once again,” Hyannis manager Mitch Karraker said. “Offensively, they did just enough to get a win.”
Since the Harbor Hawks had already clinched the No. 1 seed the day before, Karraker said he wanted to give certain players an extra day off, and other players more time on the field when creating the lineup for this game.
“There’s a few guys that we wanted to get some rest in like Jax [Gimenez], Charlie [Bates] and Brody [Briggs], he’s been catching a lot lately,” Karraker said. “And then get some other players that haven’t played like [Will] Fosberg off the bench.”
Caden Miller, who leads the team in RBIs, was also benched for this game.
The bullpen for the night only consisted of pitchers who have pitched two games or less for the Harbor Hawks, including Griffin Madden and Justin Fryer. The two newcomers appeared to have no first-game jitters, as they threw a combined five strikeouts. The bullpen as a whole threw 13 strikeouts and no walks, resulting in the shut-out game.
“I wanted to see the pitchers that we had that were coming in and get them more experience,” Karraker said. “It was good to see them have some success.”
Offensively, the only scoring happened early on in the game. The first score came in the first inning after shortstop Taylor Kirk tripled on a fly ball to center field. Second baseman Matt Ineich then hit a sacrifice fly to tag Kirk home. In the third inning, third baseman JC Davis got on base on a groundball single. Then a throwing error on the pickoff attempt by Gatemen pitcher Jackson Hoyt allowed Davis to advance to third base. A sacrifice fly by Will Fosberg tagged him home and left the score 2-0 for the remainder of the game.
As the Harbor Hawks look ahead to face the Cotuit Kettleers in the Division Series of the playoffs as the No. 1 Seed in the West Division, Taylor Kirk reflected on the team he came into at the beginning of the season, as one of the players who has been on the team longest.
“Obviously, there’s ups and downs, a tough little start for us,” Kirk said. “Then we lost some good players, obviously gained some good players and I think it’s been pretty impressive how we’ve maintained a steady culture throughout all that turnover.”
Although the team is excited about their success, Karraker and the Harbor Hawks’ coaches are already thinking of a strategy, given the fact that the team they’re set to face is one they suffered a 15-8 loss to just a day ago.
“We’re going to look at the matchups and see kind of what they do from a pitching perspective and what we want to do offensively to counter that,” Karraker said. “And from the pitching side of things, we’re looking at the rotation, seeing what works best for us and our bullpen. We’ll have a fresh pen for the first time in a long time, really excited to get that series started.”
The bullpen will actually be as fresh as it gets, as it was posted to the Hyannis Harbor Hawks Instagram story that the team is on the hunt for an extra arm for their playoff slate, as well as an extra right-handed batter. While Karraker and the coaches are searching for more ways to win, Kirk had a much simpler philosophy.
“We just got to control what we can control,” Kirk said. “Make plays of defense, get good pitches to hit at the plate, and then obviously pitchers to keep doing their thing like they did today, and it’ll be alright.”
As of now it is unknown if there will be new faces on the team, as the Harbor Hawks have a day of rest on Monday. Then on Tuesday, the Harbor Hawks will gear up for their first game of the playoffs against the Cotuit Kettleers at home.
