Drury Wins Fourth Straight
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. – Jake Gladu went 3-for-4 with a triple, and Connor Hinkell was lights out on the mound Monday as the Drury baseball team beat Mount Greylock, 10-0, in six innings at Joe Wolfe Field.
Gladu's triple came in the bottom of the sixth to drive in Hinkell, who had reached on a leadoff double, and make it 9-0.
Two batters later, the Mounties got an out on a groundball to the right side against a drawn-in infield, but an errant throw from first to third to try to double off Gladu instead allowed him to score and invoke the 10-run mercy rule.
Hinkell, meanwhile, had no mercy on the Mounties lineup.
The Drury ace did not allow a hit until the fourth inning and finished with just two hits allowed in the game.
Hinkell struck out 11 hitters in improving to 5-0 with a .64 earned run average this spring.
“Right from the get-go, he started off fast,” Drury coach Robert Jutras said. “He works ahead. He gets the leader of the inning out, and he takes a lot of the pressure off.
“We feel really comfortable about it. And then, the second, third time through the order, he’s working backwards a little bit, mixing in some things and keeping guys off balance. We like when he’s out there. He’s a competitor.”
Mount Greylock coach Rick Paris was impressed.
“He was dealing,” Paris said of Hinkell. “He located his fastball well. His curveball, he was struggling with it early on, but then he found it. And he was smart. He’d get ahead, and then he’d throw a high heater, and our guys couldn’t keep up with it, and it was just out of the strike zone and getting our guys.
“He pitched a helluva game.”
Hinkell’s offense gave him all the run support he needed in the bottom fo the first.
First, he drew a leadoff walk. He went to second on an errant pickoff throw and third on Gladu’s first hit of the game.
Gladu was erased on a successful Jameson Bayliss pickoff attempt, but Julian Feliciano and Colby Malloy each walked to load the bases with two out.
J.J. Prenguber worked a walk to drive in Hinkell for the game’s first run, and Lucas Hamilton smacked a single up the middle to drive in two more to make it 3-0 after one.
The Blue Devils then tacked on runs in the third, fourth and fifth innings.
The three-run fourth featured a two-run single by Gladu. Noah Arnold hit a sacrifice fly in the fifth.
For Mount Greylock (3-6) it was a familiar script as Bayliss had to leave the mound after three innings of work.
“Unfortunately, he gets into a lot of high pitch counts,” Paris said. “Sometimes, he gets himself out of it, and sometimes he can’t. Here, again, he was in a high pitch count after three innings, so we had to get him out of there.
“Six of their first seven runs, I think, were from walks and errors. We just can’t have that.”
The Mounties will look to snap a six-game skid on Tuesday when they visit Mount Anthony in Bennington, Vt.
Drury (7-3) takes a four-game winning streak into Thursday afternoon’s game against Mount Everett in Cooperstown, N.Y., part of a three-game Berkshire County showcase at Doubleday Field.
“We’re going to go to [the Hall of Fame and Museum] after,” Jutras said. “That will be a nice time, good trip. The kids will have a blast.
“When I played we didn’t go, and they went after I graduated with coach Pat Boulger. So I kind of chirped him up a little bit: When did you go to the museum? Where do we warm up? All that stuff.”
Drury played Wahconah in Cooperstown in 2017. It was supposed to return three years later, but no one played any high school baseball, anywhere, that spring.
“That was actually supposed to be my first year, and we got canceled,” Jutras said. “I’m glad that we get a chance to go down there. It’s super cool.”