Brink's RBI Lifts Mount Greylock Baseball
DALTON, Mass. — On a day when hits were hard to come by, one big out made all the difference.
Mount Greylock's Ian Brink lifted a sacrifice fly to center field to score Ryan Wadsworth in the top of the 10th as the Mounties took a 3-2 win from Wahconah on Monday afternoon.
Three different Mount Greylock pitchers limited the home team to three hits, and Kyle Kirchner and Ethan Wells were nearly as effective on the hill for Wahconah, holding the visitors to two unearned runs on nine hits.
The winning rally started on an outfield error that allowed Wadsworth to get to second base. After a wild pitch got him to third, Brink drove him home for the go-ahead run.
"I was just trying to battle up there and do my job," Brink said. "I was just trying to get the run in.
"[Kirchner] was changing his speed really well and keeping us off balance. But we were hitting the ball really hard. We knew we'd get some runs eventually."
Kirchner went 7-2/3 before running out of steam and giving way to Wells, who was the hard-luck loser.
Mount Greylock coach Steve Messina said the Mounties got a total team effort, right down to Brink's eight-pitch at-bat to get the winning RBI.
"Ian had a great at-bat at the end of the game," Messina said. "That was a big-time at-bat. He was down 0-2.
"And Danny Flynn played a great game at second base."
Flynn went 1-for-3 with a sacrifice bunt and a stolen base at the plate and had a busy day in the field. He started a big double play in the sixth after the leadoff man reached on a single and had two assists and a putout in the last two innings.
Wahconah came back with two runs in the bottom of the seventh to force extra innings and nearly came back to tie it again in the 10th.
After reliever Brodie Altiere got the first two outs, Eli Pease reached on an error and stole second. A walk and a wild pitch put two runners in scoring position, but Altiere got the next man to fly out in foul territory to first baseman Jake Benzinger to end it.
Altiere ended up with the win, but starter Eli Holland pitched 6-1/3 strong innings, allowing just three hits and one earned run. Robby Buffis finished the seventh inning before Altiere came on to start the eighth.
Wahconah coach Jared Shannon credited both halfs of Mount Greylcok's battery with keeping his team's run production down.
"We've scored some runs this year," Shannon said. "The difference was their catcher, Nick DiSanti. He has a very good arm. That kind of slows down our running game a little bit. We've had a lot of stolen bases this year. We're pretty aggressive.
"We only had three or four today. We rely on that to get guys in scoring position."
Wahconah did strand men on third base in the first, second eighth and 10th.
Mount Greylock made the most of the few baserunners it had.
In the fifth, the Mounties broke through for two off of Kirchner.
Delaney Pudvar got it started with an infield single and moved up when Eric Hirsch reached on a bunt. Benzinger's sacrifice bunt got two men in scoring position for Buffis, who crushed a double to left to give his team a 2-0 lead.
That held up until the seventh, when Wahconah capitalized on a rare Mount Greylock miscue to tie it.
Marco Anastasio was hit by a pitch with one out to get things going. Collin Parrott and Patrick Jamross followed with walks to load the bases.
Buffis nearly got out of the jam with a ground ball, but the Mounties got Jamross at second but couldn't turn the double-play, and a bobble allowed Parrott to follow Anastasio across home plate to tie the game, 2-2.
Mount Greylock left runners at second and third in the eighth and at second base in the ninth before Brink finally cashed in an RBI chance one inning later.