Stay Connected with YourSeason
Three homers lift Nazareth over Benet baseball
Updated: May 2, 2011 10:26PM
LISLE — Benet didn’t play badly but the Redwings just weren’t good enough to beat Nazareth in a 6-2 East Suburban Catholic Conference loss Monday.
Three two-run home runs by the Roadrunners (17-4, 3-3 in conference) doomed Redwings starting pitcher Nick Moore (1-2), who threw five decent innings with three big mistakes.
“He pitched well and it’s just one of these games where we played fairly well,” Benet coach Jeff Bonebrake said. “It’s not like we booted the ball around, it’s not like we walked a lot of people. They literally just hit the ball over the fence and we didn’t threaten that much in the middle innings until the end.”
Benet (11-9-2, 5-4 ESCC) rallied late with runs in the sixth and seventh innings to prevent a shutout by Roadrunners starter Patrick Kelly, who improved to 3-2. Kelly allowed 11 hits but struck out five while issuing just one walk. Kelly pitched 6-2/3 innings, and Anthony Baldassano got the final out for the save.
“He (Kelly) threw well for us,” Nazareth coach Lee Milano said. “We’ve been struggling a little bit offensively. We (hadn’t) hit a home run in about a week and a half, so I thought we swung the bat much better today.”
Justin Gonzalez blasted a two-run homer in the second, then Mike Barajas and Ryan Powers each went deep for two-run bombs in the fifth.
After Moore escaped a first-inning jam by stranding two Roadrunners in scoring position, the Redwings looked poised to strike in the home half of the frame. But leadoff man R.J. Gatto’s double went for naught as the center fielder was picked off second. Bonebrake termed the possibility of that play swaying the momentum as “conjecture.” Gatto redeemed himself later, tripling and scoring the second Redwings run of the game.
For the game, Benet plated just two of its 13 baserunners.
“We’re not good enough right now to make a lot of mistakes,” Bonebrake said. “We’ve got to play pretty well to beat teams like this and it was just a couple mistakes off the mound, and that was the big difference. Hopefully we just get a little more consistent offensively. I think the thing that’s kind of hurt us as a team lately is just our lack of big, two-out hits. We just haven’t had those and we just need to get those and develop some type of big inning once in a while.”
The Redwings battled back to score once in the sixth on a Matt Dorsett RBI single and Moore drove in the second run in the seventh. Moore went 4-for-4 with an RBI.
Benet left the bases loaded to end the game.
The teams square off again Wednesday.
© 2012 Sun-Times Media, LLC. All rights reserved. This material may not be copied or distributed without permission. For more information about reprints and permissions, visit www.suntimesreprints.com. To order a reprint of this article, click here.
Cell Phone Alerts
Comments Click here to view or make a comment