Throughout this season, the Christian Brothers Academy baseball team has found many different ways to win games.
Sometimes, it involved scoring lots of runs – 21 against APW, or 24 against Hannibal, double digits three other times. Other times, it involved squeezing out something far closer, as it did last Monday when the state Class A no. 8-ranked Brothers beat Chittenango 2-1.
Derek Jann started and matched zeroes with the Bears’ Devon Spaulding until the bottom of the fourth inning, when Chittenango squeezed in a go-ahead run.
Yet that 1-0 deficit did not hold because, in the top of the sixth, CBA got to Spaulding, scoring twice as Jann and M.P. Geiss drove in Jason Boule and Leo Genecco as Boule finished with three hits, two of them doubles.
All that the Bears could manage against Jann was three hits in 6 2/3 innings, Jann striking out 12 without surrendering a walk before Anthony Marsallo recorded the final out.
Far different for the Brothers was Thursday’s 12-1 win over Phoenix, done in five innings as Genecco stayed hot at the plate with three hits and three RBIs. Carmen Spinoso drove in two runs as Marsallo and Cade Bacon combined to hold the Firebirds to two hits.
On Saturday, CBA then swept a doubleheader, edging Solvay 3-2 when Kent Wilson, in the bottom of the seventh inning, singled home the winning run after the Bearcats took a 2-1 lead in the top of the seventh.
Jann pitched three innings of relief after Bacon started, the pair combining for nine strikeouts. Kodi Dotterer had three hits and scored twice, while Boule added an RBI.
The second game, a 5-2 decision over Marcellus, featured more clutch hitting, this time from Boule, whose bases-clearing double in the sixth broke a 2-2 tie.
Prior to that, CBA used single runs in the third and fifth innings to overcome a pair of Mustangs first-inning runs, Boule and Wilson earning RBIs. Boule, Geiss and Marsallo combined for four scoreless innings of relief after Mike Schaefer started.
Fayetteville-Manliu started its series with Cicero-North Syracuse last Monday and lost, 5-2, to the Northstars.
The Hornets got a first-inning run, and pitcher Max Parker maintained that slim 1-0 lead until C-NS tied it in the fourth and struck for three runs in the bottom of the fifth, adding a run in the sixth off reliever John Arold.
Seth Reisman was the only F-M batter to get two hits off Northstars ace Justin DelVecchio, with Sean O’Connor adding a double and RBI. Mike Weiczorek drove in two runs to pace the C-NS lineup.
Two days later, the Hornets turned it around, evening the series by beating the Northstars 4-1. After surrendering a first-inning run, Coleman blanked C-NS, striking out seven and allowing just five hits before John Egnaczyk worked the seventh inning for the save.
Single runs in the fourth and fifth innings erased F-M’s 1-0 deficit, and it added a pair of insurance runs in the sixth as Mitch Seabury and Itai Spinoza each got two hits, with RBIs going to Spinoza, Egnaczyk and Reisman.
The third game decided the series and, again, proved close, with C-NS edging F-M 6-5 by getting single runs in the sixth and seventh innings to overcome the Hornets’ 5-4 advantage.
They had traded runs in the second and third innings. Then C-NS went up 4-3 before F-M scored twice in the top of the fifth to take its third different lead, but it could not hold that one, either.
Egnaczyk and Parker both had two hits, with O’Connor and Egnaczyk each scoring twice. Joe Gaeta earned two RBIs and Spinoza drove in a run. Gaeta took the loss after two-plus innings pitching in relief of John Arold.
