PEABODY – The visiting Swampscott baseball team (1-1) got into the winning column Monday with a 4-1 win at Peabody.
Sophomore Jamison Ford stole the spotlight. He eclipsed all expectations with a complete game effort, allowing just three hits with only two walks and eight strikeouts, the final one to end the game.
“He pitched an outstanding complete game and was around only 80 pitches,” Joe Caponigro said. “It was just an outstanding performance and I can’t say enough about him. He’s only a sophomore and the kids feed off him. We had a couple of lapses defensively that really didn’t hurt us and we got a couple of timely hits when we needed them. I’m happy for the kids.”
Tanners’ freshman Dylan Cunningham got his first varsity start. In three innings, he allowed one unearned run on two hits, struck out five and walked four.
Peabody head coach Mark Bettencourt said he was pleased with the pitching, but the Tanners lacked offensive punch.
“When you have only three hits, you’re not going to score runs. I think we fouled off a lot of pitches today that against Winthrop last week were in the gap. And we hit some balls that were line drives right at people, but so did they,” he said. “Their kid just threw strikes and said ‘hit me’ and we didn’t. We were more concerned about what they were saying than what we were doing. We needed to just ignore that and go up there and have good at-bats. But you aren’t going to win when you score one run.”
Swampscott took a 1-0 lead in the top of the second. First baseman Jason Bouffard walked, advanced to second and third on wild pitches. Then Bouffard scored on a clutch single to right by No. 9 hitter Connor Chiarello. The Big Blue doubled the lead to 2-0 in the top of the fourth. Catcher Micahel Collins bombed a double to left. Then Collins got to third on a wild pitch, and later scored on a dropped fly ball in the outfield.
The Tanners cut the lead to 2-1 in their half of the inning when first baseman Noah Crocker led off with a deep double to center and scored on catcher Josh Sigmon’s RBI single.
The Big Blue added two insurance runs in the sixth and seventh innings. In the sixth, Bouffard led off with a walk and scored on a long double to center off the bat of designated hitter Luca Croft. In the seventh, second baseman Caden Ross made it a 4-1 game when he singled home Chase Groothius, who had reached on an infield error.
Caponigro chalked Ford’s performance all up to his excellent location.
“Today he was all around the plate and did a fantastic job,” Caponigro said.
Caponigro said a couple of other key factors were the play of Collins and the way the bench was totally into the game from start to finish cheering on their teammates.
“Michael is really solid back there,” Caponigro said. “He blocks balls very well and has a good arm and he can hit a little bit, too. We have a lot of young guys but we do have a lot of seniors having lost only one from last year’s team. They are all into as you could hear them today. For a coach, to have kids like that may not be getting the limelight but the way they are rooting for their teammates is really wonderful.”
For Peabody, Mike Petro (2+ innings, 3 hits, 2 runs, walk, 2 strikeouts) and Joey Smith (2 innings, 1 hit, 1 unearned run, 2 strikeouts) came on in relief. Bettencourt said he thought his pitching was “good enough to win.”
“I knew (Dylan) was going to be nervous and try to overthrow, but I thought he did very well in his first outing,” Bettencourt said. “He’s a hard thrower and he wants to throw as hard as he can in the first inning. He has to learn to get in the zone first and then accelerate and he’ll learn that. We’ve had hard throwers before. He had his composure when they chirped at him a little bit. We wanted to get about 60 pitches and we got that out of him and now we build off that.”
The Big Blue’s next game is against Gloucester on Wednesday at the O’Maley Middle School at 4 p.m.
The Tanners have a quick turnaround and are back in action at Revere on Tuesday at 4 p.m.
“I don’t know too much about them but they play well at home, so we’ll see,” Bettencourt said. “The best part after a game like today is we’re right back at it tomorrow and then again on Wednesday against Marblehead.”
