PHOTO BY BOB ROCHE
Swampscott’s Jonah Cadorette got the win on the mound in relief against Peabody West on Thursday.
By ANNE MARIE TOBIN
LYNN — Chalk it all up to a little bit of luck, an awful lot of good timing and a couple of unheralded and unlikely heroes.
Last night’s District 16 game at Pine Hill’s Spagnoli Field was there for the taking for Peabody West. With ace Chris Faraca on the mound for undefeated West, and Swampscott coming off three wins in the last four days in the losers’ bracket, the stars were all aligned for West to pick up another district championship.
Don’t tell that to Swampscott relief pitcher Jonah Cadorette, who, simply put, delivered an inspiring performance, matching Faraca pitch for pitch to lead Swampscott to a 3-2 win in eight innings and set up tonight’s “If” game back at Pine Hill.
All this in spite of the fact that Cadorette was pitching for the first time in the tournament.
“He wasn’t scheduled to pitch as the plan was for Dalton Juden to come in, but with Faraca mowing down our hitters, Jonah had not had his at bat so he couldn’t come out of the game at that point,” Swampscott coach Steven Correnti said. “We have a lot of pitchers on this team, so he had not been needed to this point, but he came up huge tonight, and just did a great job tonight especially considering he had not pitched in the tournament.”
While Cadorette was virtually anonymous, Faraca has been the talk of this year’s tournament. Going into last night’s game, Faraca had struck out 39 of the 49 batters he had faced in three starts, walking just two and allowing only three hits. Against Swampscott July 9 at Wyoma, Faraca had a perfect game through five innings. He struck out the first eight batters of the game before No. 9 hitter Matthew Schroeder finally put a ball in play with a ground out to second in the third inning. Dom Annese mopped up in relief, preserving the no-hitter.
Through seven full, it was more of the same from Faraca. He struck out 14 strikeouts and had given up only one hit, a leadoff bunt in the second inning by Dylan Dubiel.
Meanwhile, Cadorette, who relieved starter Nate Marston in the top of the fourth after Marston issued back-to-back one out walks, was equally unflappable, getting out of the jam with a strikeout and harmless ground out.
With the score tied at 1-1 in the top of the seventh, he hit Peabody’s hottest hitter, catcher Harry Lynch, to load the bases, but settled down to get Mike Geissler on an infield fly and then got Tyler Fawcett on an easy grounder to first baseman Pierce Friedman.
Both teams had payed flawlessly on defense, but all that ended in the eighth inning when two Swampscott errors produced an unearned run and put Peabody on top 2-1.
With Faraca still on the hill and Swampscott’s No. 8, 9 and 1 hitters due up, once again, Peabody seemed to be holding all the cards, but Swampscott had a three aces in the hole.
Friedman led off with a single to right field, then Schroeder reached on an infield error with Friedman scoring. Catcher Connor Correnti then laid down a perfect bunt to score Schroeder with the walkoff game-winning run.
“I think everybody in the park knew Connor was going to bunt, and he put down a good one,” Steven Correnti said. “We knew we had to go to small ball and square off to try to drive up Faraca’s pitch count, but I can’t say enough about the way Jonah pitched tonight. He is the hardest working kid on this team and the way he conducted himself tonight was just very impressive. Tonight, we managed to figure out a way to win, but at this point, we are still trying to figure out who pitches tomorrow night as both Nate and Jonah are unavailable.”
