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Reserve's slammer
Gallery
By ERIC FORTUNE
BERLIN CENTER
A day after suffering their second straight loss, the Western Reserve High School baseball team threw out its ace.
As happens often, Wyatt Larimer stopped the bleeding with 12 strikeouts as Western Reserve beat McDonald, 5-0.
“He’s been doing it all year for us,” Western Reserve coach Ed Anthony said. “He’s 5-0. He’s carried us. I can’t say enough about his pitching today.”
Larimer has lost only one time in his high school career.
“We know when we put him on the mound, we have a good chance to win the game,” Anthony said.
“I felt comfortable with all of my pitches today,” Larimer said. “I felt like I was getting guys to chase with my offspeed [pitches], and I felt like I was top of things with my fastball as well.”
In the bottom of the first inning, Western Reserve (10-2) opened up a 1-0 advantage after a Dom Velasquez single scored Larimer.
In the second inning, McDonald’s Zach Nolf hit a one-out single. One out later, Nick Shiley doubled just inside the third-base line.
Nolf was waved home. The relay from Matt Burcaw to Ryan Demsky and then home to Dylan Smith was perfect as Nolf was tagged out to end the inning.
“It was a nice hit by him, but Burcaw settled in and made a nice relay which I feel brought the momentum back out way,” Anthony said.
“Without that play a lot of things could have been different,” Larimer said.
Larimer and Nolf settled in over the next two innings as the score stayed 1-0.
In the fifth inning, the game changed drastically. After giving up a walk to Dallas Smith and with two outs, Larimer’s grounder to Dylan Portolese was misplayed.
Jeep DiCiccio and Velasquez responded with back-to-back singles to make it 4-0 game.
“What happened to us yesterday happened to them today,” Anthony said. “They played good ball throughout but had that shaky inning.
“That’s high school ball, unfortunately.”
Justin Ciccone then added an RBI single to make 5-0 and give Larimer all the support he needed
Western Reserve’s two through five hitters finished with six of their hits with Valsquez going 2-for-3 with three RBIs.
“He’s our cleanup hitter for a reason,” Anthony said. “We have Jeep, Wyatt and Demsky before him. It gives us a nice punch in the beginning of the order, but we need to get production one through nine.
“That’s going to be the key going down the season. We have some tough teams coming up. If we want to continue what we’ve done the last few years in the tournament, we have to start taking care of business.”
Shiley led McDonald (5-4) with a double and single a day after throwing a complete game win for McDonald against Western Reserve.