BRUNSWICK—Mt. Ararat’s early base-running mistakes cost it potential runs and Brunswick came through with situational hitting for a 6-3 victory in a baseball showdown Saturday afternoon.

“We are struggling to score runs,” said Mt. Ararat coach Bob Neron. “So rather then waiting for something to happen, we are making something happen by starting runners and getting movement in the infield. We are trying to to do anything to score some runs.”

In the top of the second, Mt. Ararat’s Gabe Pelletier hit a ground ball to Dragons third baseman Chris Bruno, who caught Brandon Glass in a rundown down the third baseline to get the first out of the inning.

“Their third baseman saved the game for them,” said Neron. “He made a couple of plays for them, where those balls get by him, it’s a total different game.”

“He himself saved three or four runs alone,” said Brunswick coach Bill Ridge said of Bruno’s play at third base. “Our team is starting to respond to good defensive play.”

Brunswick (2-8) opened the scoring in the bottom of the third when Zach Lavoie hit a sacrifice fly to leftfield which drove home Peter Doucette.

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“Thursday at practice we talked about what we can do to change the outcome of these games,” said Ridge. “Rather than setting goals, we thought how are we going to get better. One thing every guy said is we have to have more fun and we need to have more energy. It’s pretty obvious we showed that (today).”

The Dragons would score two more times in the fourth to make it 3-0. They would open the contest up in the bottom of the fifth when Adam Emery hit a double and later scored. Bruno would get on a base on an error and he would advance around the bases to make it 5-0. Trent Anderson brought in Lavoie with a sacrifice fly to the rightfielder.

“We stepped up our game offensively, first half the season we got maybe nine or 10 hits in 10 games and now we started killing the ball lately,” said Lavoie.

The Eagles’ (2-7) big inning was the top of the sixth. Ryan Lathrop got things started with a single. He would come around to score on a couple of errors. Brandon Glass reached base on an error and came in to score on a Gabe Pelletier single. Pelletier came home when Jake Liedman grounded into a fielder’s choice to the shortstop.

“If you think about it, we were one hit away from making it a 6-5 ball game,” Neron said.

It was the end of Jess Bennett’s day on the mound as he went 5.2 innings, allowing three runs and eight hits. Brady Larson came in and got Brunswick out of a jam with a couple of Eagles on base.

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“Brady has great stuff,” Ridge added. “We trusted him, we told him he just needs to throw strikes. His stuff is good enough we thought he would get out (of the jam). It’s just a matter of throwing strikes and he came out throwing strikes.”

Larson had a one-two-three top of the seventh, including two strikeouts to record the save.

Joe Van Note went six innings allowing six runs for Mt. Ararat.

Brunswick will host Erskine Academy Monday and Cony travels to Mt. Ararat, also on Monday.


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