SWAMPSCOTT — Although it was a cold Wednesday afternoon, the arms of Swampscott pitchers were hot. The Big Blue no-hit Saugus to earn an 8-2 win at home.
Starting pitcher Jamison Ford went four 1/3 innings, striking out four. Despite having just four strikeouts, Ford controlled the ball well, and when the Sachems did make contact, fly and groundouts did the trick.
Despite the combined no-hitter, Swampscott coach Joe Caponigro looked a little further postgame.
“With the amount of walks and hit batters, it kind of lost its luster,” Caponigro said. “We need to just limit those free bases.”
But overall, Caponigro was happy, highlighting his team’s defensive performance.
“Our defense was good today. We had one error, but it was a hard hop for our third baseman. I thought our defense played well.” Caponigro said.
Yes, Swamscott put up eight runs, but it only had four hits. That said, errors hurt the Sachems.
“It was the little things we didn’t do right today,” Saugus coach Joe Luis said. “[We] overthrew some throws and just didn’t make the right play at times. They only had four hits going into the sixth inning and they had eight runs.”
The Big Blue used strong third and fourth innings where they combined for seven runs to pull away. Within those innings, Swampscott showed its situational batting, scoring runs on three sacrifice hits.
Jackson Bartram drove in the Big Blue’s fourth run of the game (4-1) with a sacrifice bunt executed to perfection.
“We figured if we could put a little pressure on the defense by putting the ball in play, it might work to our advantage,” Caponigro said.
One thing was evident on Wednesday, and that was Swampscott’s speed on the bags. The Big Blue stole four bases in total, and Caponigro was pleased with the baserunning.
“We have some speed when we get on base and we run the bases well. We got some timely hits which were good,” Caponigro said.
Although he was on the losing side of things, Luis praised Swampscott.
“No excuses. Swampscott is a young team, too, and they played well today,” Luis said. “We just need to keep trying to improve each day and continue to work hard. We’re a young team and we’ll just continue to work on the little things.”
“We haven’t had a lot of wins, but we’re thankful for this one and, hopefully, we’ll be ready to go when we face Salem on Thursday,” Caponigro said.
The Sachems host Lynn English on Thursday at World Series Park at 4 p.m. while the Big Blue travel to Salem the same day with first pitch set for 4:30 p.m.
