Joe Marchilena has a very comprehensive recap of the game on his great site
http://www.nh-highschoolsports.com/He also has a nice photo album of the game as well.
Clippers take advantage of Sabers’ mistakes
AMHERST – There’s a simple explanation for how the Portsmouth High School baseball team beat Souhegan on Monday.
The Sabers made mistakes, and the Clippers took advantage of just about every one of them.
The result was a 4-0 win for Portsmouth, its 57th straight win in Class I. Three of those runs were unearned, and the fourth came after a botched double play and a passed ball in the first inning.
In all, the Sabers made five errors and managed just two hits against Portsmouth starter Nate Jones, who pitched a complete-game shutout, striking out seven and walking one.
“They took advantage of everything that we did,” Souhegan coach Bill Dod said. “We felt that we were close and we had some people in scoring position, and just couldn’t get that one key hit.”
Souhegan (12-2) got a solid performance from sophomore pitcher Terry Dugdale, who also went seven innings and allowed one earned run on six hits and five walks with five strikeouts.
While the Clippers (14-0) seemed to get the timely hits, coach Tim Hopley felt they could have done more with their bats.
“We didn’t swing the bats as well as we can,” Hopley said. “A lot of that credit goes to Terry. He was fantastic. He threw all his pitches in all the counts. He battled and battled. We had a couple of opportunities where if we had gotten one hit late in an inning, it could have been five, six, seven (runs). He came at us, he bore down at us and got big outs.”
Dugdale stranded Portsmouth runners in scoring position in six innings, but too often, his defense let him down. The Souhegan offense couldn’t do much more against Jones, as the Sabers had just three base runners all day, only one of whom reached second base.
Matt Schagrin had a double and James Astbury had Souhegan’s other hit. For Portsmouth, Aidan O’Leary had two hits with a run scored and a RBI, while Mike Montville walked twice and scored twice.
“We had a little mistake that put a runner on second base, and they got a base hit,” Dod said. “We made an error, they got a base hit in the third inning. When we made a mistake, they were strong enough to come back. Defensively, we did some good things, but you have to play on a higher level when you play the best and we were slightly behind.”
The Clippers took the lead in the first inning. Jones hit a one-out single, but was taken out at second on a fielder’s choice by Montville. Souhegan had a chance for an inning-ending double play, but couldn’t get the throw to first off, and Montville wound up on second after a passed ball.
O’Leary battled through a nine-pitch at bat and turned the miscue into a run by smashing a double to right-center field, scoring Montville.
“Aidan’s at bat in the first inning, he just battled and battled and then had the hit to score the first run,” Hopley said. “We kind of took advantage of what they gave us to give us a little breathing room.”
The Clippers took more in the third inning. Jack Gonsalves opened the inning by reaching base on a throwing error by Tyler Manoogian, and went to second on a sacrifice by Jones. Montville walked and O’Leary flew out to center before Conor Trefethen singled to right to score Gonsalves, making it 2-0.
Montville opened the fifth by drawing another walk and O’Leary followed with a single. Dugdale was able to get two outs around a bases-loading walk to Quinn McCann.
But a ground ball by Rob Welch was bobbled by third baseman Astbury, allowing Montville to score to make it 3-0 and leave the bases loaded. Before he could throw another pitch, Dugdale was called for a balk, bringing in O’Leary for a 4-0 lead.
Dugdale didn’t allow a hit to the final 14 batters he faced, but six reached base safely thanks to three walks and three errors.
On the other side, Jones retired 10 in a row after allowed two runners to reach with two outs in the fourth inning.
“They came out swinging the bats and he was able to mix things up,” Hopely said of Jones. “He threw his cutter, his breaking ball, and kept them off balance. It kind of took away some of their aggressiveness as the game wore on, and that put him in a better position as to what he could throw thereafter.”
Both teams have two games remaining in the regular season. Portsmouth hosts Kennett on Wednesday and Milford on Saturday, while Souhegan hosts Con-Val on Wednesday and travels to Milford on Friday.
