By Nick Ristoff
SYRACUSE, N.Y. — The Syracuse Jr. Chiefs held on to beat the Cortland Crush 3-2 in New York Collegiate Baseball League action at Onondaga Community College, Wednesday night.
Patrick Merryweather (Onondaga CC) pitched seven innings, struck out five batters, allowed just three hits and two runs to score. Merryweather didn’t allow a hit until the sixth inning. He started with his nasty breaking ball to get ahead of the Cortland batters then threw his fastball.
“I felt pretty confident,” Merryweather said. During his time for the Jr. Chiefs Merryweather is 5-1, with a 3.03 ERA. His confidence and experience playing on his home field all summer should translate to his final year at OCC.
With Wednesday’s win the Jr. Chiefs improved to 15-30.
“We saw a good sized crowd, so we wanted to play well in front of them and obviously you want to win the last couple of games of the year.” Coach Haynes said. “There’s never been a day when I wasn’t happy to be out here and I’ll definitely be sad when it’s all over in a couple of days.”
The Jr. Chiefs took a 1-0 lead in the bottom of the second inning. With two outs Mark Martin (Bryant) hit a deep triple to center field then Matthew Kozuch (Fordhan) followed suit and drove a RBI triple to the right field fence.
In the fourth inning, Matthew Kozuch (Fordham) advanced to first on four balls then Michael Lanza (Bryant) struck a double to left center to put them both in scoring position. Kozuch scored on a sacrifice fly to right field by Brian Dudek (U of Buffalo).
In the fifth inning the Jr. Chiefs tacked on their third and final run of the evening. Riley Moonan (Fairleigh Dickinson) and Vinny Mallaro (U of Buffalo) reached on back-to-back one-out hits. Moonan eventually scored on a Mark Martin (Bryant) sacrifice fly to left field.
The Crush gave the Jr. Chiefs a scare late in the game though. They scored one run in each the seventh and eighth innings.
Greg Jasek (Clarkson) walked and scored when Yale Hughes (Liberty) reached on an error in the eighth.
Their late game rally seemed legitimate until Tommy Eng (Adrian) got the nod for the Jr. Chiefs in the ninth inning. Including Wednesday’s game Eng has racked up 10 saves on the year with an impressive 2.28 ERA.
Eng stepped on the mound with his usual, collected demeanor and struck out the side. He was painting the corners with his fastball, moving it up and down in the zone. Eng has two more years of collegiate baseball to only improve on his skills.
“I’m going to be a junior so I want to finish out my college degree and then hopefully someday pitch in the show,” Eng said.
Cortland travels to Sherrill on Thursday for a doubleheader with the Silversmiths.
Syracuse gets a day off before they close the season at Cortland, Friday. First pitch at Beaudry Park is 7 pm.
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