With a masterpiece by Clay Hendry (North Florida) on the mound and 14 hits by the offense, Y-D took home a convincing 5-0 win against Harwich in the opening game of the East Division Championship Series at Whitehouse Field on Friday.
Whitehouse Field was the site where Y-D’s season came to an end last year as the team was swept by the Mariners in the Division Championship Series. Friday served as a chance for Y-D to begin the process of avenging that series loss from a year ago and get its first postseason win over Harwich since 2014.
Pierce Friedman (Maine) took the mound for the Mariners, coming off his lone start of the summer on the Cape, where he tossed 6 2/3 hitless innings against Brewster on Saturday. Y-D didn’t allow him to settle into that kind of groove, as Will Baker (Georgia Tech) and Armando Briseño (Cal State Fullerton) hit a couple of line-drive singles to put runners at second and first with one out in the first inning.
Chris Hacopian (Texas A&M) and Ryan Niedzwiedz (Southern Illinois-Edwardsville) followed that up with some more loud contact, but both resulted in lineouts to left field to allow Friedman to work out of the inning unscathed.
Hendry went to work on the rubber for Y-D in the bottom half of the first and quickly set down Harwich in order with just 12 pitches thrown. With two outs in the second inning, Jack Bell (TCU) lined a single up the middle and advanced to second base on a wild pitch to get into scoring position. Friedman was able to escape another jam by getting Connor Capece (Creighton) to ground out to shortstop.
Following another perfect inning from Hendry, Jayce Tharnish (Kentucky) and Baker strung together two consecutive singles, then Briseño reached after Friedman made a wide throw to first base on a bunt to load the bases with no outs. Hacopian hit another ball hard, but it was a liner right to Patrick Fultz (Wright State) at third base, who made the catch and stepped on the bag for a massive unassisted double play.
Just when it looked like Y-D was going to let another scoring opportunity slip away, Niedzwiedz delivered by lining a slider into right-center field for an RBI single to give Y-D a 1-0 lead. After Friedman walked Yomar Carreras (Rutgers) to reload the bases, he caught Jordan Crosland (Maryland) looking at a fastball at the knees for the final out. Despite holding the lead, Y-D was just 1-for-6 with runners in scoring position across the first three innings.
Now pitching with a lead, Hendry completed a third consecutive perfect inning by getting Sam Harris (Duke) to swing-and-miss at a slider for his fourth strikeout of the day.
After Friedman retired the first two hitters of the fourth inning on just two pitches, Y-D put together a two-out rally to give Hendry some insurance runs. Tharnish was hit by a pitch, then Baker hit a ground ball down the third base line for a double, and Tharnish made a mad dash around the bases to score all the way from first to make it 2-0 Y-D.
A seven-pitch walk to Briseño knocked Friedman out of the game, and Hacopian greeted Ryan Reich (Seton Hall) by driving a 3-2 fastball into right-center field for an RBI single to put Y-D ahead 3-0. Niedzwiedz added another run-scoring single to make it 4-0 Y-D when he lined a fastball up the middle, giving him his sixth RBI in the past two games.
“I’ve just been building off of the other players and sticking to my aggressiveness,” Niedzwiedz said. “I’m trying to attack the fastball early and see the off-speed, and I’m seeing it pretty well, so I’m just staying with the aggressive mindset.”
Harwich got its first baserunner of the night in the bottom of the fourth when Niko Brini (Wofford) lined a fastball into center field for a single. Hendry worked out of the inning by getting Ryan Gerety (Northeastern) to ground into a 5-6-3 double play.
Hendry allowed his first walk of the day in the fifth inning when he missed with a 3-2 breaking ball to Fultz; however, another double play off the bat of Sam DeCarlo (Washington) gave him five scoreless innings.
Reich started to finally quiet the Y-D offense, with only one baserunner allowed across the sixth and seventh innings. Hendry continued to dominate Harwich, becoming the first Y-D starter all season to pitch into the seventh inning.
After a groundout by Brini, Hendry completed his unbelievable outing in the seventh inning by striking out Jake Koonin (Princeton) with a slider and getting Gerety to fly out to Tharnish in center field. Hendry ended up with seven shutout innings and only two baserunners allowed while facing the minimum 21 hitters.
“It makes it so easy when you know even if you don’t score in an inning, [Hendry] is going to go scoreless next inning,” Niedzwiedz said. “With this offense, we’re going to keep going, and we’re going to score runs for him, so we just know that it’s comfortable when he’s on the mound and we can have our aggressive mindset.”
The Y-D offense did continue to add on runs with two outs in the eighth inning when Baker crushed a fastball into right-center field for a triple, which was his fourth hit of the day, and then Briseño drove him in with an RBI double to put Y-D ahead 5-0. All five runs that Y-D scored on Friday came with two outs.
The Mariners continued to have no success against the Y-D pitching staff when Drake Frize (San Diego) set them down in order in the bottom of the eighth inning.
With two outs in the ninth inning, Harris became the first Harwich hitter to reach base since the fifth inning when he worked a five-pitch walk. Frize slammed the door after that by getting Brini to fly out to right field, capping off a one-hitter by the Y-D pitchers and the 5-0 win.
“We’re just going to keep building,” Niedzwiedz said. “We’re going to keep swinging, we’re going to keep our comfortable mindset, and we’re just going to keep going.”
Y-D will have a chance to clinch a spot in the Cape League Championship for the first time since 2016 when it hosts Harwich for Game 2 at 4 p.m. on Saturday.
