Carlino and Salt Cats come from behind to defeat Twins

By Justin Lada

SYRACUSE, NY — After 19.2 innings of work over three starts this year, no team in the New York Collegiate Baseball League had been able to put a run across when the Syracuse Salt Cats had Zach Carlino (Mt. Union) on the hill. At 20 innings that streak was snapped, but it still wasn’t enough to hold off the Salt Cats as they came from behind to win their third in a row, a 6-3 over the Geneva Twins.

Carlino went 6.1 innings of work, allowing eight hits with four strikeouts and two earned runs allowed. To make it more impressive for Carlino, he worked with Dan Szathmary (Georgia College) and Anthony Massicci (Canisius) as catchers due to injuries to the Salt Cats usual two catchers.

As if that didn’t put the cherry on top of yet another impressive outing for the right hander form Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he even helped his own cause at the plate. The Salt Cats coaching staff pulled the rabbit out of their hat, employing a little used rule, putting Carlino in as the pitcher and DH, so he could hit for himself and continue to DH when a new pitcher came in his place on the mound.

While shutting down and keeping the Twins at bay, Carlino notched three hits and two RBI including the go ahead runs in the seventh inning, a two run single that made it 5-3 Salt Cats.

Cristian Fiorito (Concordia) preceded Carlino with an RBI double that scored Carlos Guzman (Molloy) to knot things up at 3-3.

The Salt Cats plated five runs in the seventh inning, sending 11 batters to the plate in the process. That inning started with a gift as Bud Morton (Southern) walked and as Tyler Kirwan (UMass-Boston) tried to sacrifice him over, the Twins third baseman threw the ball past the first baseman and allowed the fleet of foot Morton to cruise home and Kirwan took third.

Guzman singled in Kirwan and later scored thanks to the Fiorito double that tied things up. Guzman also singled, stole second and scored on a Mike DeCarr (Cortland) single in the eighth inning to give the Salt Cats an insurance run.

Turns out Kyle Cushman (OCC) didn’t need it. In 2 2/3 innings of relief he was brilliant. He allowed three hits, did uncork a wild pitch that allowed a run to score that was charged to Carlino, but was able to hold off the rest to get his first win of the season.

At 10-6 now, the Salt Cats  are tied with the Wellsville Nitros a game back of the Olean Oilers in the standings.

Game three of this four game set with the Twins will be tomorrow at 7pm from McDonough Park in Geneva. The Salt Cats starter is TBA.

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