Twice in a four-day span, the Jamesville-DeWitt and Christian Brothers Academy baseball teams got together, and in both instances, the red-hot Red Rams got the best of it.
Building its win streak to 12 games, the state Class A no. 18-ranked Red Rams got a pitching gem from Will Havens and timely hits that helped produce a 2-0 win over the Brothers in last Wednesday afternoon’s return engagement.
The first game on May 15 had gone 8-2 in J-D’s favor in large measure due to Ian Crawford’s sixth-inning grand slam. But neither Havens nor his CBA pitching counterpart, Mike McCully, was going to surrender much in the second meeting.
Through three innings, it remained 0-0, but it was McCully who would crack just enough in the bottom of the fourth for J-D to produce its first run. Another run followed in the fifth as Scottie O’Bryan hit a solo home run and Matt Cappellletti scored the other time.
Cappelletti was the only player on either side to get two hits. And while McCully pitched well, Havens, going 6 1/3 innings, limited the Brothers to four hits and two walks, striking out four, before Casey Kretsch relieved him in the top of the seventh and got the final two outs.
CBA had a chance, in between the two clashes with J-D, to get back in the win column, but could not do so at Fulton last Tuesday afternoon, seeing things get away late in an 8-3 defeat to the Red Raiders.
Other than a run in the top of the first inning, the Brothers never led, Fulton grabbing a 3-1 edge by the third inning. CBA pulled within one, 3-2, but a three-run fifth-inning rally, plus two runs in the sixth, accounted for the Red Raiders’ ultimate winning margin.
Dom Spinoso took the loss, lasting 4 1/3 innings before A.J. Pankowski took over in relief. Spinoso, Jack Sheridan and William Ierlan each had one RBI as Bryce Moore got a pair of hits.
Right after the loss to J-D, the Brothers did get a much-needed 3-2 win at Phoenix, producing single runs in the first and third innings, but requiring another run in the sixth to withstand the Firebirds’ comeback as it managed 12 hits to Phoenix’s five.
Fulton pitcher Bryce Guernsey struck out five in his complete-game effort, overcoming seven CBA hits as Adam Baldwin’s home run and three RBIs paced the Red Raiders’ attack.
J-D, meanwhile, made it 13 wins in a row Friday, holding off Homer 7-5 in a game where it built a 7-3 lead through five innings. Kretsch drove in two runs, with McGee getting two hits as he, along with Crawford, Cappelletti and Andrew LeClair, drove in single runs.
McGee pitched and lasted until the fifth inning, when Homer mounted a comeback attempt. It took the combined relief work of Josh Kowalczyk and Sean Hlywa to pull the Rams through the tricky final stages.
In Saturday’s regular-season finale against Oneida, the Red Rams got its 14th consecutive win, topping the Indians 7-2 largely on the basis of one big rally. Clinging to a 2-1 lead, J-D took charge in the bottom of the fourth by plating five runs.
Though helped by six Oneida errors, the Rams did get eight hits, two of them from Cappelletti, who produced a pair of RBIs. Crawford also drove in two runs as O’Bryan added an RBI, Kretsch walked twice and scored twice, with Parker Wing also scoring two runs.
CBA also played Saturday, against CNY Counties League regular-season champion Liverpool, and lost, 3-1, to the Warriors, a pair of first-inning runs making the difference. Spinoso’s solo home run in the bottom of the seventh off reliever Jeff DeStefano broke up the shutout, but the Brothers managed just four hits.
Given the no. 12 seed for the Section III Class A playoffs, CBA visits no. 5 seed Homer in Tuesday’s opening round, with the winner going to the quarterfinals against Cortland or Mexico.
J-D, as the no. 2 seed, has to get through Phoenix, the no. 15 seed in order to face East Syracuse Minoa or Camden in the quarterfinals.
