Baseball Snaps Skid with Win at NHTI

Baseball Snaps Skid with Win at NHTI

Concord, NH – CMCC baseball got back to its winning ways Wednesday night, claiming a 13-5 victory on the road against NHTI. The win snapped a four-game losing streak for the Mustangs in a game that was called after the eighth inning due to darkness.

Brendan Mahaney led the effort with a 3-for-5 day at the plate, reaching on errors in his other two at-bats. The designated hitter had two-extra base hits including a three-run home run. Levi Tibbetts threw five innings on the mound, striking out eight, with Brady Vincent coming on in relief and picking up the win.

Central Maine got on the board in the top of the first when Jake Calver delivered a sacrifice fly to center field that brought home Brandon Gour. Mahaney followed that up with a hard grounder to short that caused an error and allowed Ryan Stone to score for a 2-0 lead.

Both teams found some offense in the third. CMCC plated three runs in the top half of the inning. Calver and Mahaney both scored on wild pitches, and Gage Hubbard trotted home on a Shane Jewett RBI single to right.

The Lynx responded down 5-0 and scored three of their own in the bottom of the inning, then tied the game in the fourth. Shortstop Travis Graf was the catalyst, driving in runs and scoring himself in both innings.

Both teams made pitching changes in the sixth inning, and being held scoreless for three innings the Mustangs bats roared back to life late on.

Mahaney drove in Garren Post with a grounder to third that caused an error in the seventh. The next batter, Cameron Dostie hit a two-RBI liner into left to give Central Maine an 8-5 lead.

In the eighth, Lee Robertson scored on a ground out from Stone before Post hit a solo home run off Caleb Szafran. That prompted NHTI to bring in Joseph Gutierrez to try and end the inning, but the relief pitcher didn't have much luck. Hayden Durrell and Calver hit back-to-back singles and Mahaney cleared the bases with a powerful three-run shot that cleared the centerfield fence.

With a 13-5 lead suddenly at his disposal, Vincent closed things out in the bottom half of the inning before the game was called on account of darkness.

"I was pleased with the ending result," said head coach Ryan Palmer. "I wasn't pleased in the middle innings when we allowed NHTI to claw back into it. We got pretty good pitching even though the stats don't show it. Not a lot of hard-hit balls, just a lot of bloop shots. But that's baseball."

The Mustangs end the fall ball portion of their season on Saturday when they host Quincy College for a doubleheader. Game one against the Granite gets underway at noon in Auburn.