Tyler Pettorini made his first start for the Whitecaps Friday night, but it didn’t end particularly well for Brewster. Photo credit Sadie Parker.
by Eamonn Ryan
HARWICH—On Friday night in the Cape Cod Baseball League, you were either on the right side of a blowout or on the wrong side of one.
Falmouth kicked it off with a 27-2 thumping of Cotuit. Yarmouth-Dennis followed up with a 14-0 rout of Bourne. The Whitecaps…suffered a similar fate to Cotuit and Bourne.
Brewster (15-22-2) lost 21-5 to the Harwich Mariners (17-21-1) at Whitehouse Field. Instead of clinching a playoff spot and moving into third place—which would have happened with a win—the Whitecaps put up a stinker.
The Whitecaps scored the game’s first run in the first. Hunter D’Amato (Fairleigh Dickinson) led off the ballgame with a walk and was scored off an RBI single by James Tibbs (Florida State). Brewster’s good fortune would not last long, however.
And it all started with a single slip.
With two outs in the bottom of the second, Harwich designated hitter Bryan Arendt (UNC Wilmington) hit a high hopper towards Brewster second baseman Tyler Pettorini (Ohio State). It appeared that Pettorini had a read on it, but instead he slipped and the ball found grass in right field to extend the inning.
After Arendt reached, the next ground ball from Cameron Leary (Boston College) should have ended the inning for Whitecaps starter Rocco Reid (Clemson), but an overthrow of first base by Jonah Sebring (UC Santa Barbara) extended the inning even further.
Those mistakes proved to be costly. Very costly.
The floodgates opened as the Mariners proceeded to thump Reid for nine runs over the next 14 batters. Every hitter in Harwich’s order scored a run, but they were all unearned due to Sebring’s error.
“I mean nine runs in the second you know, it’s tough to come back from that,” pitching coach Brian Del Rosso said. “I thought Rocco Reid came out, had pretty good stuff. It’s kind of a shame to see an outing like that get spoiled, but one of those we’ll look to put in a rearview mirror.”
It was as if a switch had been flipped at Whitehouse Field after two batters reached. After three innings, the Mariners had extended their lead to 13-1.
Brewster did not punch back until the fourth inning, when Jaime Ferrer (Florida State) smashed a 423-foot home run into the woods beyond left field, driving in Jared Jones (LSU) and Will Turner (South Alabama) to make it a 13-4 game.
“Good piece, good piece of hitting. I was happy to see him kind of square one up there,” Del Rosso said. “I wish we could have mustered up a little bit more, but kind of just how the balances of the game work.”
The Whitecaps then loaded the bases in the frame and Tibbs ripped a long fly ball to center field. If it dropped, the Whitecaps could have added three runs and made the game much more competitive, but instead it landed softly in the center fielder’s glove for the third out.
That would be the only damage Brewster would do, however, until the ninth inning. Sebring manufactured his own run by getting on via hit-by-pitch, then scoring off a wild pitch three batters later, but by then the ballgame was far out of reach.
“One of those that you’re just looking to hopefully get back at tomorrow,” Del Rosso said.
The Whitecaps stay on the road in the last week of the regular season as they head to Orleans for a matchup with the Firebirds at 6:30 p.m, still owning their postseason fate as a win would clinch a playoff spot.