Hosman, Batchelor lead Peabody West to win over Lynnfield

LYNN – Peabody West’s Austin Batchelor and Matt Hosman have shown their talents on the Little League diamond for the last two years. On Thursday at Reinfuss Field, the two stars once again showed their brilliance against District 16 champion Lynnfield in the opening round of the Section Four Tournament.Batchelor held a potent Lynnfield lineup to three hits and nine strikeouts over 4.2 innings while Hosman was 3-for-3 with a homer and two runs scored, and got the save in a 4-1 win that is the 10th in a row for Peabody in the sectionals.Peabody will play North Andover East today (5) for a date in Sunday’s finals. Lynnfield will take on Stoneham today (2) in an elimination game.”It was nice for us to finally play in a close game and get that experience,” Peabody manager Dave Batchelor said. “We haven’t had a lot of that and I think it’s good for us.”Lynnfield got only three hits in the game but had several quality chances to put Peabody on the ropes, but Batchelor was able to squirm his way out of the jams.”We had our shots and just couldn’t knock them in,” Lynnfield manager Kevin Canty said. “I’d take my chances holding them to four runs. We just didn’t hit.”Before many of the fans coming into Reinfuss had even had a chance to get settled in their seats, Lynnfield sent a shockwave through the ball park when Jake Rourke led off the game with a line-shot homer to center off Batchelor, marking the first time all tournament that Peabody had been behind. Batchelor then walked Brendan Sullivan, bringing the elder Batchelor out of the dugout to try to settle things down.”I think that caught Austin off guard a little bit,” Batchelor said. “I went out and told him that those things are going to happen sometimes, and he settled down nicely after that.”The chat father had with son paid off as Batchelor worked around another walk to Greg Baselesco to escape further damage.Peabody turned to its explosive offense, which put up 49 runs on the way to its district title, and grabbed the lead back in the bottom of the first. Hosman led things off with a double. Batchelor and Traverse Briana followed with walks from Rourke to load the bases.A passed ball allowed Hosman to scamper home with the tying run. After a groundout, Mike Petrosino lifted a fly ball to the warning track in center, scoring Batchelor to make it 2-1, Peabody.”We calmed down and got two back right away to take the lead,” Batchelor said. “It’s so much easier to play with the lead than from behind.”West added to its lead in the second when J.J. Layton reached on a leadoff error. A passed ball and back-to-back walks again loaded the bases, this time for Batchelor, who missed a grand slam by three feet. The sacrifice fly scored Layton to make it 3-1 after two.Batchelor also was settling into a groove on the mound, striking out the side in the third and fourth innings. Hosman then gave his pitcher a little more breathing room in the fourth when he tomahawked a long homer onto the hillside beyond the right-field fence for a 4-1 lead.Baselesco relieved Rourke following the homer and had to dance his way out of a bases-loaded situation as Peabody failed to break the game open.Batchelor got the first two batters in the fifth before having to exit due to reaching the 85-pitch maximum with Jake Burt at second following a double. Hosman came in from short and got Baselesco looking to end the inning and then worked a perfect sixth to save the win.In the first game of the day, District 14 champion North Andover overcame an early 2-0 deficit to District 13 champion Stoneham thanks to a 10-batter, five-run fourth inning. North Andover tacked on two more runs in the fifth and then had to hold on for dear life to take a 7-6 win.Stoneham’s Drew Johnson belted Max Burt’s first pitch of the day for a homer to make it 1-0 after one. Jake Jordan’s RBI single in the second increased the lead to 2-0.Joey Bramonti’s 3-run homer with one out in the fourth gave East a 3-2 lead. Billy Marcotte and Chris Kea