LAWRENCE — You can’t say the Peabody Tanners baseball team didn’t have its chances in its season opener Sunday afternoon at Lawrence High School.
But sloppy baserunning and an inability to get a timely hit or two on the part of the Tanners all but handed the game on a silver platter to the Lancers, who won, 4-0.
The Tanners had runners on base in every inning and runners in scoring position in each of the final five innings. The bad news was they stranded 10 baserunners, were picked off base three times, and were caught stealing home.
“We always preach that you need three things to win,” said Peabody coach Mark Bettencourt. “You need your pitchers to throw strikes, and (starting pitcher) Eddie Campbell did that today as he didn’t walk a single batter. You need to play good defense, and we did that today without a single error. And you need to get timely hits. We didn’t, but Lawrence did and that was the game.”
Lawrence scored all the runs it needed in the first inning. Campbell (4 earned runs, 7 hits, 5 strikeouts, 2 hit batters) retired the first two batters on two pitches, but then hit shortstop Kebler Peralta. First baseman Christian Varona singled Peralta to third on a hit-and-run. Third baseman Luis Mejia doubled both runners home to stake the Lancers to a 2-0 lead.
In the third, Campbell got the first two outs quickly on a pretty 4-3 double play (second baseman Calvin Ingemi to first baseman Mike Sabella). After Varona was hit and a Mejia single, left fielder Luis Colon plated both runners with a clutch 2-run double to make it 4-0.
“Both of those guys (Mejia and Colon) are first-year players and they are two big bats,” said Lawrence coach Kevin Fielding. “When we saw them, we just said, oh my God, thank you, because they just came out of nowhere.”
A baserunning miscue snuffed out a promising Tanner rally in the top of the fifth.
With one out, Sabella walked and third baseman Will Preshong reached when his grounder to third was bobbled. An errant throw allowed Sabella to scoot all the way to third. But Lancers starter Miguel Matos (7 IP, 6 hits, 8 strikeouts, 3 walks) got out of the jam when he spied Preshong attempting to steal home and flipped the ball to the catcher to get Preshong by a country mile.
“In that situation, that steal home works 98 percent of the time,” said Bettencourt. “We just took off too soon and their pitcher couldn’t help but see it.”
Campbell settled down and kept the Tanners within striking distance, He pitched to only nine batters over the final three innings and allowing just one single the rest of the way, who was promptly erased on an Ingemi to shortstop Jordan Anzuoni to Sabella double play in the fifth.
Left fielder Michael Tansey led off the fifth with a single, but was picked off by Matos, who also picked off two other Tanners. Catcher Taiden Perez followed with a double, but was stranded.
“The first pickoff was on me, that was on the coaches,” Bettencourt said. “The kid had a hesitation move, and after we saw the first one, we just them, just don’t let yourselves get picked off, but that didn’t work out so well on the last two.
Anzuoni led off the sixth with a double, but he, too, was stranded.
With one out in the seventh, Tansey (2-for-3) and Perez (2-for-3, double) hit back-to-back singles, but were also stranded.
The game was a rematch of last year’s Division 1 North tournament first round game, won by the Tanners, 3-1.
“Today was a perfect day to play weather wise,” said Bettencourt. “We certainly played well enough to win. We made no errors, we didn’t walk anyone and turned a couple of nice double plays, but we need to get that big hit and we didn’t. We’ll get better.”
