Y-D was a run shy of completing a five-run comeback against Wareham on Monday, as the team fell 6-5 in eight innings to lose their sixth consecutive home game.
Heading into the day, the showdown at Red Wilson Field on Monday was between the two teams leading their respective divisions. Y-D was clinging to a one-point lead over Brewster in the East Division, while the Gatemen held a one-point advantage over both Bourne and Falmouth in the West.
Wareham struck early against Chris Downs (Cal Poly) when Chris McHugh (NC State) lined a 2-2 fastball for an RBI double with one out in the first inning. Downs escaped the inning without any further damage by punching out Vance Sheahan (USC Upstate) on a changeup and getting Hayden Yost (Florida) to ground out.
Making his third start against Y-D of the season, Logan Baisley (FGCU) cruised through two perfect innings in just 15 pitches with some help from an outstanding diving play by Brayden Randle (Ole Miss) in the first.
After Downs settled down with a 1-2-3 second inning, Michael Catalano (Oklahoma) entered the game for Y-D in relief. With a runner on first and one out, McHugh jumped on a first-pitch curveball from Catalano and crushed it 372 feet over the left field wall for a two-run blast to put Wareham ahead 3-0.
The Gatemen continued to put together comfortable at-bats against Catalano in the third inning, as Sheahan worked a six-pitch walk with two outs, then Yost launched a 1-2 breaking ball over the wall in right-center field for the second two-run home run of the inning to make it 5-0 Wareham.
Y-D fought back immediately in the bottom half of the inning when three hits from A.J. Nessler (Pittsburgh), Garrett Wright (Tennessee) and Brayden Dowd (USC) loaded the bases against Baisley with one out. In his second game with Y-D, Jack Arcamone (Georgia) lined a fastball into center field for a two-run single to cut Y-D’s deficit to 5-2. Arcamone has made an instant impact with Y-D, driving in two runs in each of his first two games with the team.
Chris Hacopian (Texas A&M) kept the Y-D rally going by scorching a fastball to the wall in left field to score both Dowd and Arcamone and make it a one-run ballgame. The two-run double by Hacopian left the bat at 103 MPH and scored the third and fourth runs of the inning, matching Wareham’s four-spot in the top half. After Yomar Carreras (Rutgers) drew a walk to knock Baisley out of the game, TJ Schlageter (Louisville) preserved Wareham’s slim lead by getting Will Baker (Georgia Tech) to swing-and-miss at a fastball.
Jack Nobe (Xavier) worked a scoreless fourth inning for Y-D; however, he ran into some trouble in the fifth when he allowed a leadoff double to Colby Turner (Michigan) and hit McHugh to put runners on second and first with no outs. Tyler Pitzer (Mississippi State) came into the game to put out the fire and picked off Turner at second base for the first out.
Caden McDonald (Florida) won a 10-pitch battle with Pitzer by driving a fastball to the wall in center field for a run-scoring double to give Wareham a key insurance run. Pitzer was able to limit the damage there, as he struck out both Sheahan and Yost to end the inning.
“I was trying to keep throwing strikes [to McDonald] just so that I didn’t get a walk there, but he won; [he] just got a nice fastball down in the zone and hit it up the middle,” Pitzer said. “From then on, I just didn’t want to let it get any further than that.”
Schlageter was dominant out of the Wareham bullpen with 2.1 hitless innings, striking out six of the eight batters that he faced. Meanwhile, Pitzer found his groove on the bump for Y-D, working a 1-2-3 sixth inning with just 10 pitches.
Y-D began to threaten once again in the bottom of the sixth when a walk and two hit-by-pitches loaded the bases with one out for Wright. Wright hit a dribbler in front of home plate for an RBI groundout to cut it to 6-5 Wareham. With the tying and go-ahead runs in scoring position, Ty Starke (Louisville) preserved the Gatemen’s lead by getting Dowd to strike out.
Pitzer completed his stellar outing by retiring the final 11 hitters that he faced after the RBI double from McDonald. Pitzer ended up with six strikeouts in four innings without an earned run, lowering his ERA to a miniscule 0.46, which leads the league among qualified pitchers.
“Cutter worked really well today; [it] had a lot of depth to it,” Pitzer said. “I didn’t really have my fastball too much today, but the slider was pretty good and definitely helped get strikeouts.”
Bryce Turner (Florida International) worked a scoreless eighth inning for Wareham to slam the door on a 6-5 victory after the game got called due to darkness. With the loss and a Brewster win on Monday, Y-D drops to second place in the East Division at 15-12-2.
Y-D will look to snap its three-game losing skid when it hosts Bourne at 5 p.m. on Tuesday.
