By Jon Sargalis
Box Score Photos Jules
With the top two seeds locked up by the Mohawks and Stallions, these teams played for the final time in the regular season on Tuesday night at Shuttleworth Park as the Mohawks claimed a 6-3 win.
Jimmy Dionne (Howard College) was the sparkplug of the Mohawks offense as he went 3-for-4 with a double in the second, an RBI single in the fourth and a 2-run home run in the sixth.
The game was scoreless until that fourth inning single by Dionne as Mohawks starter Zach Hernandez (Belmont) threw 4 hitless innings, but also worked in and out of danger as he issued 6 walks over his 4 innings of work.
Amsterdam increased their lead to 5-0 in the sixth as Javar Williams (Wake Forest) reached on a fielder’s choice which allowed Tyler Figueroa (Siena/Appalachian State) to score. That was followed by a Cade Ladehoff (NJIT/Michigan) RBI single to drive in Williams, extending Ladehoff’s RBI streak to 9 straight games as he has driven in 16 runs during this stretch. Jimmy Dionne then followed with a 2-run home run, his first of the season, to cap off the 4-run inning.
Saugerties got on the board in the seventh as Tyler Bak (Wofford) got a ball past Jimmy Dionne as the resulting error allowed 2 runs to score. With Bak at third, Matt McIntire (New Haven) hit a groundout to second allowing Bak to score and cut the Mohawks lead to 5-3.
The Mohawks added one back in the bottom of the seventh as Aiden Stewart (Delaware) led off the inning with a double and scored on a Tyler Figueroa double to make it 6-3.
The game ended with zero hits on the board for Saugerties and it appeared Zach Hernandez, Zach Eldred, Manny Santos and Parker Aikens combined to throw a no-hitter. However, 2 plays were reviewed following the game.
The first was Andrew Amato’s at-bat to lead off the fifth inning. Amato hit a shallow popup to second base that was initially ruled an error. Upon review, the second basemen Aiden Stewart lost his footing for a split second which made him a step slow getting to the ball and allowed it to land in front of him, which does not constitute an error. After fielding the ball cleanly and based on Amato’s position on the base path, Stewart needed to get off a very fast and accurate throw. The throw did beat Amato to the bag, but it drew first basemen Jimmy Dionne off the bag resulting in Amato being safe. The difficulty of the play was deemed to surpass the threshold of ordinary effort and the ruling of the play was changed to a hit.
The second play was the Tyler Bak at-bat in the seventh inning. The ball got past first basemen Jimmy Dionne and was ruled an error as the opinion of the official scorer was that an ordinary effort would have resulted in the first basemen making the play. Without sufficient video evidence, no change was made to the scoring.
Hernandez, Eldred, Santos and Aikens instead combined to throw a 1-hitter, allowing 3 unearned runs, 11 walks and 10 strikeouts. Hernandez improved to 2-0 and Aikens earned his first save of the season, while Jackson Coen (Wofford) took the loss falling to 1-2.
Amsterdam improved to 33-6 on the season and will be off on Wednesday before traveling to Mohawk Valley on Wednesday. Saugerties fell to 27-11-2 and will host the Albany Baseball Club in their next game on Friday.