Baseball Beats Rising Tide 11-7

The Whaler baseball team hasn’t earned as many wins as they would have liked through the first 11 games of their season, but they improved their record to 2-9 on Wednesday with an 11-7 win over the Rising Tide Herons.

“The kid they were throwing was pretty good and I was really happy how come the second or third time through the order, we hit him,” head coach Jack Pearson said. “We had some really good at bats, worked the counts, and we were aggressive on the bases.”

The Whalers began the game by allowing four runs in the first inning. They got one back in the top of the second inning thanks to an RBI hit by Leonel Almonte, but found themselves in trouble in the bottom of the second inning when Rising Tide had the bases loaded and nobody out.

“I have a game Friday and two games on Saturday so I didn’t want Colin (Lynch), who started, to throw more than 55 pitches so he can come back and throw on Saturday so I decided in that situation I was going to make the switch to Riley (Williams).”

Williams came in and struck out all three batters he faced to get out of that extremely difficult situation without allowing a single run. It was an enormous pendulum swing in the game that gave the Whalers all the momentum.

“For them to not score any runs that inning was just huge,” Pearson said. “Riley just pitched incredibly. He had nine strikeouts in four innings. He did let up one hit and an earned run but for the most part he was dominant all day.”

The Whalers grabbed their first lead of the game in the fourth inning, scoring four runs on RBI singles by junior catcher Argelis Nunez, senior outfielder Tim Murphy, and a two-RBI single by Lynch.

Lynch had a strong day offensively driving in four runs. He was right in the middle of the Whaler’s five-run fifth inning as well that made it a 10-4 game going into the bottom half of that inning.

The Herons got one back to make it an 10-5 game, but Nantucket avoided further damage by turning a 6-4-3 double play to get out of the fifth.

Pearson wanted to keep Williams under 55 pitches as well so he could be available to make a start on Saturday against Bishop Connolly, so he made the move to senior Fabian Martinez in the sixth inning to close out the final two innings.

“Fabian did his job,” Pearson said. “With an 11-5 lead when he came in, he only allowed one run in the sixth and one run in the seventh. He threw strikes and we made plays in the field. We sort of kept making plays to avoid turning momentum over to them.”

Pearson said senior second baseman Garner Ray, senior center fielder James Mack, and senior Manny Almonte all had strong defensive days.

The Whalers also had nine “clean” RBIs, which Pearson was thrilled to see his team produce because it means they are taking advantage of the runners they are getting on base.

“I think we are just having better approaches when we are up at the plate, smarter and more patient and when we are swinging we are putting the barrel on the ball and making things happen,” Pearson said. “We have run into some tough pitchers this season and really struggled too. But today we played really well and this kid was really solid. It is super encouraging to see how we were able to do some damage against him.”

The Whalers will have a busy weekend that begins with a home game against the Sturgis West Navigators on Friday at 4:30 p.m. and will conclude with that doubleheader against Bishop Connolly on Saturday. Game one of the doubleheader will begin at 11 a.m. and game two will begin at 1:15 p.m.