Timely Hitting and Dominant Pitching Give Mainers Fourth Straight Victory
July 19, 2023 - New England Collegiate Baseball League (NECBL)
Sanford Mainers News Release
Sanford Mainers' Bryce Afthim
(Sanford Mainers, Credit: Madison Giltner Photography)
SANFORD, Maine - For the second consecutive game, middle-inning success at the plate and stout pitching combined to give the Sanford Mainers a 4-2 win over the Martha's Vineyard Sharks on Wednesday evening.
In front of their home crowd for the first time in four days, the Mainers gave the ball to a player that has pitched at Goodall Park on plenty of occasions, Bryce Afthim (Southern Maine). Afthim, who was named a 2022 NECBL All-Star and the 2022 Robin Roberts Top Starting Pitcher in the NECBL, made his first start of the 2023 campaign on Wednesday after appearing six times out of the bullpen.
Afthim made quick work of the Sharks early as he pitched a 1-2-3 first inning, escaped a one-out double by Carsten Sabathia (Georgia Tech) in the second and threw another 1-2-3 in the third.
The fourth inning did not follow the same trend for Afthim as Martha's Vineyard put up the first run of the ballgame. Nathan Hall (Clemson) doubled with one out and just two pitches later Scott Seeker (Mount St. Mary's) singled to right field.
While fielding the single, Jack Toomey (Holy Cross) let the ball squeak by him giving enough time for Hall to come around to score on the error. Seeker tried to advance to second on the single, but he was thrown out by Cal Hewett (Vanderbilt), who had picked up the ball after Toomey's error.
An inning later though, Toomey made up for that error after a leadoff single put Matt Polk (Vanderbilt) on first base. Polk advanced to second on a stolen base and after a strikeout by Eddie Eisert (Virginia Tech), Toomey knocked home Polk with his tenth double of the season.
Following the trend of the night before against Keene, the Mainers followed their fifth inning run by putting multiple runs on the scoreboard in the sixth.
Devan Bade (Binghamton) and Logan Poteet (Vanderbilt) kept their All-Star seasons going with back-to-back singles that started the sixth turn at-bat for Sanford. Those two each advanced a base on a Nick Roselli (Binghamton) sacrifice bunt before Polk popped up to second base for the second out.
As the inning looked to be heading in the wrong direction after the leadoff singles, Eisert drove a payoff pitch into the left-center field gap that scored both Bade and Poteet and gave the green and yellow its first lead of the night.
Afthim, who finished his appearance by allowing just one other runner to reach after Seeker, did not get to pitch with the new lead despite his offense putting him in position to pick up the win. The second-year Mainer turned things over to Michael Dragon (Merrimack) after six innings of four-hit baseball in which he struck out three and surrendered one unearned run.
Dragon forced a one-pitch pop out by Seeker to start the seventh inning, but on his next pitch Sabathia took him deep over the left field fence to cut the Sharks' deficit to just one. The right-handed pitcher recorded strikeouts of Gio Colasante (Harvard) and Caden Shapiro (Princeton) to end the frame without further problem.
The first reliever out of the bullpen for the Moose turned the ball over to Jake Poindexter (Lipscomb). Poindexter ran into instant trouble in his fifth appearance of the summer, which came after blowing a save against Valley his last time out.
Poindexter hit Demitri Diamant (Georgia Tech) with a pitch before walking Matt Maloney (Dayton) and allowing an infield single to Nolan Nawrocki (Clemson). The second-year Mainer forced a pop out of Ryan McCoy (Louisville), who homered twice against Sanford in the first meeting between these two teams, and struck out Hall and Seeker to keep the lead intact.
A half-inning later, Sanford's offense gifted Poindexter an insurance run to work with as Bade and Poteet singled back-to-back for the second time in the ballgame. Two batters later, Polk drove in Bade with a single to right field.
Poindexter allowed a one-out single in the ninth, but he worked the final two outs including a strikeout of Diamant to finish off the two-inning save.
The Mainers, who jumped to second place in the North Division on Wednesday evening, travel to White River Junction tomorrow to face the team they jumped in the Upper Valley Nighthawks.
Images from this story
 Sanford Mainers' Bryce Afthim (Madison Giltner Photography) |
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New England Collegiate Baseball League Stories from July 19, 2023
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