READFIELD — Not many baseball teams will win a game in which it has four runners thrown out on the bases or at the plate. Yet by taking advantage of other Maranacook miscues, that’s exactly what Waterville did on Wednesday afternoon. Five Purple Panthers scored after reaching base by either a walk or hit by pitch, and Waterville took a 6-3 win to end the regular season.
Waterville (12-4) appears to be peaking at the right time. The Panthers ended the regular season winning eight of nine games. Wednesday’s win at Maranacook and Friday’s win over Gardiner gave Waterville victories over a pair of teams that beat it earlier this season.
“It means a lot, considering we lost to both of them early in the year. It’s a good way to finish the season strong,” said Waterville’s A.J. Godin, who threw three scoreless innings in relief of Dalton Wood to get the win Wednesday.
“If we had lost these two, or even dropped one, we might not be in (the playoffs) this year. This is another great Heal point win, plus a team that beat us previously,” Waterville coach Don Sawyer said. “We’re in the running for a home game now, and that was their incentive to come down here and play baseball. Now we’ll just see what happens.”
Waterville scored the winning run in the top of the fifth inning. Cody Pellerin led off with a walk, and went to third base on a Dan Pooler single. Cam Gardiner’s RBI single gave the Panthers the lead, but Gardiner was thrown out trying to stretch to second base, and Pooler was thrown out trying to score on the same play. Waterville had to settle for the one run and a 4-3 lead in what had been a potential big inning.
“We made some baserunning mistakes today. We’ll try to fix that going forward. The kids are aggressive, and we hate to back off. You make mistakes when you’re aggressive,” Sawyer said.
Waterville added to its lead in the sixth. Ben Cox led off by getting hit by a pitch, and scored on a two-out error. In the seventh, Cox laid down a perfect squeeze bunt to score Gardiner with an insurance run.
“You can’t put leadoff guys on. That’s (Baseball) 101, right there. That hurt us,” Maranacook coach Eric Brown said. “We could’ve won that game, but we sort of beat ourselves a little bit, and they made some great plays, as well.”
The Panthers led 3-0 in the third, when the Black Bears scored all three of their runs to tie the game. Cam Brochu hit a two-out, two run home run to left center field to cut Waterville’s lead to 3-2. Nick Bowie was hit by a pitch, went to second base on a balk, and scored the tying run on Connor Ireland’s double down the first base line.
After the Black Bears hit Wood a little harder the second time through the lineup, Sawyer went to Godin, who walked two and struck out three in his three hitless innings.
“I was a little tired, because I pitched on Friday, but other than that, I didn’t feel bad. I was throwing hard at the beginning, then I fatigued a little bit, but I threw strikes,” Godin said.
Gardiner had three hits for Waterville, and Pellerin scored twice.
Maranacook ends the regular season at 9-7, and will host a Western Class C preliminary round game next week. The Black Bears can finish no worse than fifth place in the region, Brown said.
Travis Lazarczyk — 861-9242
Twitter: @TLazarczykMTM
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