Peabody baseball handles Saugus

SAUGUS – In need of something to kick-start a slumbering offense, Peabody coach Mark Bettencourt decided to shake things up a little bit before his team embarked to World Series Park on Monday.Working on being more aggressive at the plate instead of trying to run up pitch counts, the Tanners brought that new focus to the diamond in a major way as they belted four home runs and cruised to a 13-7 win over Saugus.Click here for a photo gallery.”We’ve been a hot and cold team at the plate and we needed to do something to get going with the bats,” Bettencourt said. “We wanted to be aggressive and go after the first good pitch we saw. It’s what we worked on in practice and it paid off.”Despite the new approach at the plate, Peabody still showed its patience in the batter’s box as it worked Saugus pitching for six walks and took advantage of six Sachem errors to score five unearned runs.”Peabody is such a good hitting team that you can’t give them extra outs like we did,” Saugus coach Rich Angelo said. “It will always come back to bite you.”The Tanners would get going early, loading the bases in the top of the second and scoring twice on an RBI fielder’s choice from Matt McIsaac and an errant pickoff attempt.Bobby Losanno began Peabody’s long-ball assault in the third as his 2-run shot extended the lead to 4-0 and knocked starter Ty Kennedy from the game in favor of Dom DiPesa.Saugus got those two runs back in the bottom of the third on a 2-out, 2-run blast by DiPesa and would inch even closer in the fourth when catcher Steve Blaney led off with a homer.The Sachems would actually load the bases with two outs in the fourth, forcing Bettencourt to summon McIsaac from the bullpen to strike out Dave Witham to end the inning.Peabody then blew things wide open in the fifth, striking for four runs on two hits and three Saugus errors. Walks to Steve Girolamo and George Tsonis preceded a Casey Grenier single that brought Girolamo home.Tsonis scored on a groundout, with two more runs scoring on an error and a Genaro Ciulla single to make it 8-3.Saugus again cut into the lead in the fifth, getting RBIs from Kennedy and Al Nahigian to make it 8-5.Peabody, though, would deliver the knockout punch in the sixth.Tsonis and Grenier walked with one out before McIsaac ripped a 3-run homer for an 11-5 lead. Ciulla and Wes Sanders would hit back-to-back shots later in the inning to complete the Tanners’ long-ball barrage.