Saugus– The best-of-three North Shore Baseball League quarterfinal playoff series between No. 7 Saugus and No. 2 Kingston will come down to a decisive third game tonight as the Night Owls blanked the Wings, 5-0, on Thursday evening at World Series Park.
The Wings received a solid start on the mound from pitcher Justin Horvath, who fanned seven Kingston batters in his six innings of work. The down side for Saugus was its bats were held to just three hits, all singles.
“Justin pitched great,” Saugus manager Mark Mitchell said. “Unfortunately we gave him a couple unearned runs and that took us out of the game a little bit early. He pitched great, we just couldn’t get the bats going and we were playing catch-up.”
Mitchell added that he was hoping to see a more intense Saugus team on Thursday. Saugus’ intensity drove the Wings to a 4-3 victory over Kingston in the first game of the series.
“We won the first game (of the series) so we were in the driver’s seat tonight,” Mitchell said. “We might not have had the same intensity we had in game one. Hopefully we have the intensity we had in game one for game three. I don’t know if it’s because we didn’t have our backs up against the wall, but we didn’t have the same intensity.”
After both teams went down in order in the first inning, Kingston scored the first run of the evening in the top of the second. Dan Morin drew a walk to lead the frame and stole second base. Two outs later, an infield error allowed Morin to come home from second for the 1-0 Kingston lead.
The Night Owls added two more runs to their lead in the bottom of the third after Saugus went down quickly in the second. Joey Murphy singled and stole second, and scored on a RBI single off Joe Morin’s bat. Another defensive miscue hurt Saugus as a high fly ball hung in the air and dropped, allowing Morin to score and up the lead to 3-0.
That was more than enough offensive support for Night Owls starting pitcher Aaron Hall, who retired the Owls in order in four of his six innings of work. Hall tallied five strikeouts in the win.
“Our offense has been kind of contagious for the whole season,” Mitchell said. “When one’s hitting, they’re all hitting. Tonight, nobody was hitting so it was kind of tough.”
Saugus’ best chance to make things interesting came in the bottom of the fifth. Dawson Gaudet and David Harris laced back to back singles to lead the inning, in hopes of starting a rally. After an infield popout, Nick Raimo was hit by a pitch to load the bases. The rally attempt fell short after Hall notched a strikeout and induced another popout to escape the threat unscathed.
“We had the bases loaded in the fifth inning,” Mitchell said. “That was the inning where if we were going to do some damage, it would’ve been nice to do it then.”
The Night Owls plated two more runs on RBI singles in the sixth and seventh innings to pad their lead to 5-0. The Wings went down in order in the seventh and Kingston walked away with the win, forcing a third game tonight at Haverhill Stadium with the game’s time TBA.
“The biggest thing is just the intensity,” Mitchell said. “These kids have been playing together for nine, 10 years, so they’ve had their backs up against the wall plenty of times. They’re not going to be nervous or anything. It’s moreso them having that feeling where they have to win. The intensity will be the key for us in game three.”
