By ABIGAIL SCHMIDT
HOUGHTON, N.Y. — The Genesee Rapids played their final home game of the season Friday night at the Kerr-Pegula Athletic Complex and came away with an 8-5 triumph against the Wellsville Nitros in New York Collegiate Baseball League action.
The win was the second in a row for Genesee as Vincent Santarsiero (Fontbonne) improved to 4-5 on the season. The right-hander allowed two earned runs on four hits with two strikeouts in six innings.
“Vinny threw pretty well tonight,” said Rapids manager Tyler Rost. “He had a couple defensive miscues early that made the score look worse than it really was, but I thought he threw pretty well for us.”
“My fastball was running really well,” said Santarsiero. “And then tonight was the first time I’ve thrown a slider and that actually worked really well so that was new for me; God blessed me. My splitter was working well tonight too.”
Ryan Chamberlain (Pitt-Bradford) tossed a scoreless inning and a third out of the bullpen. Breton LaRose (Sacred Heart) struck out two of the four batters he faced for his eighth save of the season.
The Nitros scored four of their five runs in the third inning and held a 4-2 lead going into the fourth.
“Guys were having nice plate approaches in that inning,” said Nitros manager Jake Bannerman. “We didn’t try to do too much, we took pitches that we should’ve taken and we hit balls hard that we should’ve hit hard.”
The fifth Wellsville run came in the seventh inning when Christopher Welch (Mississippi Coll) scored off a Dylan Rajkovich (Webster) RBI double.
Rajkovich was 2-for-4 with one RBI and two doubles on the night.
Harry Montero (Bloomfield) recorded an RBI and a double. Donny Killian (Buffalo) also tallied an RBI.
The Genesee offense was consistent. They scored at least one run in every inning except the third and the eighth.
Corey Andrade (Anna Maria) went 2-for-2 with two RBI and scored a run. Austin Hauck (Sienna Heights) recorded added two RBI while Bailey Smith (Howard Payne) accounted for two RBI, a run and a double on the evening.
Tyler Minogue (Bellarmine) and Nick Ippolito (California St Stanislaus) also had an RBI.
“We had good approaches at the plate,” said Rost. “We were able to get guys on either by hits or walks and move them over. I know we drove guys in with sacrifice flies a few times so that was good to see.”
“We didn’t get ahead in counts,” said Bannerman. “Anybody can hit a fastball when they’re up 2-0, they know exactly what’s coming. Our guys just had to do a better job with those first pitch, second-pitch strikes to get the batters back on their heels instead of having the advantage.”
The Wellsville mound saw four pitchers on the night. Brian Baker takes the loss. He allowed three earned runs on six hits with two strikeouts in four innings. Michael Vovris (Hilbert) started the game, while Juan Reina (Bloomfield) and Jensen Kirch (Wabash) came out of the bullpen along with Baker.
This was the Nitros final game of the 2015 season. They ended with a record of 7-39.
“We knew going into our last 15 or 20 games that we didn’t really have much of a shot,” said Bannerman about his season. “But we continued to improve. Guys had great approaches at the plate. Guys kept working every single day. They came to the field and worked hard. That’s all you can ask as a coach. We didn’t make the playoffs but we can still take things from this season.”
The Rapids improve to 20-24 on the season and travel to Olean Saturday for their last two games of the summer — a double header against the Oilers.
“We had a pretty young team this summer,” said Rost. “We kept getting better as the season went on. It’s been good to get to know the guys and develop some good relationships with them. I hope we can end on a good note tomorrow.”
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