Tuesday afternoon was a day to forget for McGann-Mercy’s baseball team, which dropped its League VIII series opener with Mattituck 12-2.
Mattituck (7-3 League VIII, 7-4 overall) got a great start from Cameron Burt who hurled a complete game, striking out 10 batters, while keeping his pitch count under 100 pitches. His fastball was popping the catcher’s mitt the entire game.
“Cam did a great job today,” said Mattituck coach Steve De Caro. “He threw strikes, mixed up the ball well, and his offspeed stuff was working. He had a rough time on the mound initially but after that he settled in.”
McGann-Mercy (3-4, 3-4) scored its only runs in the first inning when they tied the game at 2-2 after Christian Lynch roped a two-run triple.
De Caro says catcher Brian Pelan plays a huge part in Burt’s success who improved to 3-0 on the season. Pelan, without the coach’s assistance, calls every pitch of the game.
“What fun would that be for the kids if I were to call the game,” said De Caro. “I’m not the one seeing the pitches. Catching is a grueling job, you might as well have some fun doing it.”
Mattituck scorched the ball all day long connecting on two round-trippers and numerous extra base hits.
“We’re really erratic with our hitting,” said De Caro. “Some days we’re like this and some days we’re trying to jack the ball out of the yard. We were lucky to have the wind blowing out. Today was, I hate to say it, a typical day for us. We’re a pretty good hitting team.”
Ian Nish and John Schultz homered for Mattituck. Nish’s home run was his 4th on the season.
Chris Dwyer was an integral part of the offense driving in three runs while Joe Tardif set the table hitting 3-for-5 on the day.
“We’ve been putting up double digits every game except the last game when we ran into a pretty good pitcher, Ryan Schultheis from Hampton Bays,” said De Caro. “We won in a walk-off win in that one, so that was pretty good. But before that we’ve been smashing the ball.”
The key to consistent hitting is the constant coaching throughout the game says De Caro.
“We’re lucky because we have two volunteer assistants,” he said. “And one of them basically his job is to prepare our guys for at-bats and that’s Gene Rockland. He’s our pitching coach and he also keeps an eye on the guys and talks to them right before they’re going to get up and reminds them what they did wrong last time. So we’re real lucky about that.”
“A lot of people want to coach in Mattituck for some reason,” said De Caro. “It must be my charm.”
The series resumes tomorrow in Mattituck at 4:30 p.m.
“We still have to see Lynch tomorrow,” said De Caro. “I don’t want to say we’re afraid of anybody but we’re ready to see Lynch, we’ve seen him pitch before.”
“They’re a good club,” said Mercy head coach Ed Meier. “They’re a Class B team, they should come in and beat us pretty good, that’s what they are supposed to do.”
“Going forward we have to keep putting together some good at bats, take care of what we can in the field and improve our base running, we need to be more aggressive,” said Meier.
But the series is still up for grabs.
“We’ve got to take it one game at a time,” said Meier. “We’re going to prepare to win tomorrow and if we win tomorrow maybe we can take the series on Friday.”
RiverheadLOCAL photos by Michael Hejmej
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