CENTRAL NEW YORK – As they moved toward the Section III playoffs, the Jamesville-DeWitt and Bishop Grimes baseball teams both found themselves in good form.
Two games played last Thursday bore this out, even if the results were different. J-D pulled out a 2-1 home victory over Auburn as Grimes almost ended Westhill’s bid for an undefeated regular season before taking a 7-5 defeat.
The first game in the J-D-Auburn series had Luke VanMarter hold his own in a pitching duel with Owen Brichard, VanMarter only surrendering a second-inning run and four hits while recording six strikeouts.
Brichard kept his team up 1-0 until the Rams tied it in the bottom of the sixth on A.J. Sumida’s double that scored Eamon Giblin. Then, in the seventh, Dante Santos walked, made it to third and, with two outs, scored the winning run when Giblin singled.
Meanwhile, Grimes found itself trailing Westhill 2-0 early before getting a run in the second inning and then, in the top of the fourth, scoring four times to chase starting pitcher Mike Madigan.
Bruno Kinsey drove in two of those runs and Jon Farstler scored twice, yet the 5-2 lead didn’t hold as Westhill scored five times in the bottom of the fifth, chasing Cobras starter Owen Tierney.
Farstler would pitch a scoreless sixth, but Aiden Kerr, who relieved Madigan, went 3 1/3 innings without allowing a run, allowing Westhill to hang on.
Two days before it faced Mexico, Grimes took on Mexico and, by with a dramatic seventh-inning comeback, was able to claim a 4-3 win over the Tigers.
Neither team scored until an exchange of fourth-inning runs. Then Mexico scored twice in the top of the sixth, but the Cobras cut it to 3-2 in the bottom of that frame. Grimes then got the tying and winning runs in the seventh to pull it out.
Away from all this, East Syracuse Minoa had a two-game series against Cortlnad, which began last Thursday with the Spartans falling 2-0 to the Purple Tigers at Gutchess Field.
Carter Stewart pitched well in five innings, only giving up a run in the third before Cortland added an insurance run in the sixth off Trey Bova. Meanwhile, Purple Tigers pitchers Luke Rogoff and Zach Muir kept ESM off the board despite seven hits, two each by Kevin Stewart and Nick Commisso.
The rematch on Friday would go 3-2 in ESM’s favor, all the Spartans’ production coming in the bottom of the second when Dan Gilkey’s double scored two runs and Marlon Czajak’s single brought home another.
Cortland answered with two runs in the top of the third, but Luke Liedka allowed nothing more, pitching a complete game and limiting the Purple Tigers to five hits while earning nine strikeouts.
J-D was back in action Saturday, against Utica Proctor, and it turned into a wild affair where the Red Rams scored in every inning except the fourth – and still lost by a 19-15 margin.
Proctor’s nine-run second inning established a lead it would continue to reinforce the rest of the afternoon despite all of J-D’s efforts at the plate.
Santos blasted a home run, tripled and finished with five RBIs. Giblin went four-for-five as he and Jake Ogata drove in two runs and Tyler Kaelin got three RBIs. Peyton Kimball and Juan Garcia led Proctor with four RBIs apiece as Garcia also smashed a home run.
