In a game that included five lead changes, 25 combined hits and 20 combined runs, Y-D pulled away from Wareham late for a 13-7 victory at Red Wilson Field on Tuesday.
The first meeting between Y-D and the Gatemen on June 17 was a pitcher’s duel throughout, with Wareham holding off a late rally from Y-D in the ninth inning for a 3-2 win. Tuesday’s matchup couldn’t have been any different, as at least one run was scored in six of the nine innings and 16 of the 18 starters had a hit.
Zach Harris (Georgia) made his first start of the season for Y-D on Tuesday after pitching two scoreless innings out of the bullpen last week. He picked up right where he left off by retiring the side in order in the first inning.
Logan Baisley (Florida Gulf Coast University) got the ball for Wareham after he pitched three scoreless innings in the first matchup against Y-D. This time around, Baisley was greeted rudely by Brayden Dowd (USC), who jumped on the first pitch and drove it 370 feet over the wall in left-center field to give Y-D a 1-0 lead.
After Baisley settled down with six straight batters retired, Wareham broke through on the scoreboard with two outs in the third when Dalley hit a liner off the glove of Cider Canon (Davidson) in right field for a game-tying double. A passed ball during a four-pitch walk in the next at-bat gave the Gatemen a 2-1 lead, knocking Harris out of the game after 2.2 innings.
Cody New (California Baptist) came in for Y-D and stranded runners at the corners by catching Caden McDonald (Florida) looking at a breaking ball. As would become the trend throughout the night, Y-D came back to tie the game in the bottom half of the inning when Canon scored on a wild pitch.
After the Gatemen regained the lead on a sacrifice fly in the fourth, Y-D started to make loud contact against Baisley in the bottom of the inning. Chris Hacopian (Texas A&M) drilled a triple off the top of the wall and was brought in on a sacrifice fly by Alex Hernandez (Georgia Tech). Cody Miller (East Tennessee State) and AJ Soldra (UConn) followed that up by hitting back-to-back home runs to give Y-D a 5-3 lead, which knocked Baisley out of the game.
“Early on [in the season], pitchers were helping the hitters, throwing up a bunch of zeros and putting up a couple of shutouts,” Miller said. “Now the bats are hot, and we’re able to put up some runs and give our pitchers some run support.”
The Gatemen refused to go away, putting up a three-run inning of their own in the fifth to once again regain the lead. McDonald, who also came in to pitch in relief for Wareham, hit a towering fly ball that just cleared the center field wall to tie the game at 5-5. Two batters later, Chris McHugh took a fastball up in the zone from New and hit a line-drive homer to center to make it 6-5.
The two sides continued to trade blows, as Y-D immediately loaded the bases with no one out in the next half inning, and Hernandez hit a run-scoring groundout to knot the game up. With two outs and the game still tied, Miller lined a breaking ball from McDonald into left-center field for an RBI single to give Y-D a 7-6 lead.
“I’m just keeping it simple [at the plate]; that’s really the key,” Miller said. “If you can shorten up and put the ball in play, good things happen, and that’s what I’ve been doing, especially with two strikes.”
Yomar Carreras (Rutgers) gave Y-D some much-needed breathing room with a liner up the middle for a two-run single that capped off a four-run fifth inning to make it 9-6.
Wareham got one back in the sixth, but Dominic Desch (Nevada) provided some crucial shutdown innings for Y-D from there. Desch went three innings out of the bullpen with zero earned runs allowed to keep the 9-7 lead.
Y-D put the game away with its second four-run inning of the day in the eighth, which extended the lead to six runs. The big hit came from Hernandez, who scorched a ball 102 MPH into center field for a two-run double that made it 12-7.
Drew Koenen (Virginia) finished off the 13-7 victory with a scoreless ninth inning, getting some help from a tremendous leaping grab at the wall by Chase Brunson (TCU) in right field. With the win, Y-D collects its fifth consecutive victory and moves into first place in the East Division with a record of 6-2-1.
“It’s always good when you’re winning,” Miller said. “Even when we weren’t winning, it was fun, so that really proves who we are as a team and who we are as people.”
Y-D will look to keep the good times rolling when it travels to play Harwich at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday.
