LYNNFIELD — It was a long time coming when the Lynnfield baseball team got back out onto the field Saturday afternoon, and the Pioneers didn’t waste any time in getting the drama going. In a nine-inning thriller against Cape Ann League rival North Reading, Lynnfield was the victim of one too many mistakes in a 2-1 loss on its home field.
“I thought we had two good weeks of practice and a few scrimmages, but you’ll always get some hot-and-cold play when you have a lot of kids who haven’t played at the varsity level before,” said Lynnfield coach John O’Brien. “I think our pitchers definitely threw well enough for us to win or at least keep us in the game, but you can’t make those errors and mistakes at critical times like that.”
The lone RBI on the day for Lynnfield came from Aidan Burke, who went 0-for-3 with a sacrifice fly. Evan Balian went 2-for-4 in the loss, while Henry Caulfield (1-for-4, run scored), Jack Bird (1-for-3) and Luke Martinho (1-for-4) added hits for the Pioneers.
On the mound, Blake Peters pitched a solid game in his first start of the season. Peters went four-plus innings, allowing no runs on just two hits with five walks and three strikeouts. Accuracy issues led to a high pitch count for Peters, and Trent Balian was brought in as a relief pitcher in the fifth inning. He went on to toss the final five innings of the game, allowing two runs on four hits with two walks and two strikeouts.
After North Reading moved runners into scoring position in each of the first two innings but came up empty, Lynnfield finally struck first in the bottom of the third. Caulfield opened the inning with a single before Bird dropped down a sacrifice bunt, and the delayed throw allowed Caulfield to scamper all the way to third base in the process. Next up was Burke, who launched a fly ball into left field that was just deep enough to score Caulfield on a sacrifice fly, making it 1-0 Pioneers.
“That’s the kind of baseball we like to play,” said O’Brien. “The guys came through and played some good situational baseball there, but we’ve got to be able to sustain that a little more.”
The score remained there until the top of the seventh inning. A one-out single and a balk put a North Reading runner on second base before the Hornets knocked a single into centerfield. The runner on second made an attempt to score, but Martinho made an incredible one-hop throw from deep center to gun down the runner and keep the Pioneers’ 1-0 lead. But the other runner advanced to second on the play, and on the next pitch he made a move to steal third. The Lynnfield throw got away and into left field, allowing the tying run to score and the momentum to shift all the way to North Reading.
The two sides went back and forth through two extra innings from there, with North Reading eventually getting the go-ahead run on a Lynnfield error.
Lynnfield (0-1) is back in action Tuesday afternoon (3:45) on the road at Triton.
“It was a tough first game, but hopefully we can learn from this one and be better the next time out,” said O’Brien. “We’re going to need to hit better and clean up the issues in the field, and hopefully we can do that starting Tuesday.”
