Tech hosts formidable Grand Street in hard-fought contest, loses 8-3

4/15/24

From Coach Nardiello: With our getting 4 Hits and 12 Walks in 7 innings, Tech had more than enough chances to score a ton & upset Grand Street at our PG1 field on April 15. Despite the walks, we hit a few on the button and both teams made great plays. But this was a game we felt could have been ours.

We lost scoring chances due to getting deep into counts, and allowing an erratic HP umpire too much control (looking at 3rd strikes 5x). Grand St. had 12 Walks, as well.. The strike zone was small when we pitched and to shift each inning. We never “blame” umps, but this should have been a far better and lower scoring game. (24 walks?) Last year we played a 3-2 game in 14 innings vs. Grand Street. This one had that tone at its onset.

Pitching wise, Hugo Tosler started strong and it was 0-0 after 2 innings (despite us getting 5 runners on). Our defense was solid, led by run-saving catches by Sawyer Reo at SS and Aayan Ramamurthy in CF. Then in the 4th, Hugo was squeezed: getting to 7 BBs and many were K’d (but the ump just didn’t see it that way/ the pic below was a ‘Ball 4’ call, for example on GameChanger). We were down 4-0, got to 4-1, and Silas Hubbell came into pitch and settled us down. Then 5-1, 5-3 and we threatened time and again.. but we did make 2 poor base-running choices, and perhaps sat back looking to walk instead of hitting the 1st or 2nd pitch with runners on. In top 7 walks & singles plated 3 more for them (with Nico Harvey & Cooper Chung battling on the mound) and we couldn’t answer in a frustrating 8-3 loss. There were many highlights for us including a booming RBI triple by Ricky Nunez and Trevor Nieuwenhuis hitting well (RBI single).

[Photos by Vera Nieuwenhuis to come!]