Cortland Standard .net

By TANEY BEAUMONT
Staff Writer
Things didn’t start out well for the Cortland High baseball team in the opener of Tuesday’s OHSL Freedom National Division doubleheader against Homer Central on Greg’s Field at Beaudry Park.
That all changed around the midway point of that first game, though, and the Purple Tigers wound up sweeping the Trojans in two very different ways, rallying for an 8-6 win in the opener and romping 10-0 in the nightcap on a windy and increasingly chilly day and night.
Coach Ben Albright’s team improved to 6-4 atop the league standings and is now 6-5 overall while Homer is now 3-6 league and 4-7 overall.
“We knew that getting two wins today could be big,” Albright said. “We wanted to make sure we came out on top. We got two great pitching performances; (senior) Justin Prentice settled right in after a bad first inning in the first game, and (junior) Jake Woods pitched so well in the second game, throwing a lot of strikes and getting ahead of hitters. He was very confident, and we needed that.”
Woods finished with a complete-game three-hit shutout that included 10 strikeouts, while Prentice survived a rocky start — Homer scoring five unearned runs in the first inning of the opener on four hits as CHS committed three errors — and allowed just two hits the rest of the way. Homer senior starter Kenny Ellis took the mound loss,
“This is a good team, but we’re young,” Homer coach Rob Nasiatka said after the first game. “I’m sick of losing one- and two-run games, but when you’re losing those in your 10th game you’re not young any more. If you can’t get up for Cortland, then you can’t get up at all.”
After the nightcap, Nasiatka, whose team went scoreless over the last 11 innings of the doubleheader, said that “We were outplayed, outcoached and outhustled. We have to figure out what we want to do with the rest of the season. We’ll have a meeting tomorrow to figure it out. Woods pitched a great game, but we didn’t come ready to play. Cortland’s a good team; I don’t know how they lost the games they lost.”
Albright, whose team has now won four straight and five of its last six, had the answer.” I think we hit a funk being off two weeks after losing to Auburn (7-1 at Onondaga CC on April 10) in a game we knew we could have been in. We were struggling a little but had a little talk about how we can play and came around.
“Our first inning today was absolutely awful; we weren’t ready to play. That wasn’t Cortland baseball.”
Cortland 8, Homer 6: The first game got off to a bad start for the hosts as Homer’s leadoff hitter, junior right fielder Nikoli Grihin, reached base on an infield error. Junior left fielder Beck Lundeen then singled to left and, after a double steal put the runners on second and third, freshman second baseman Casey Hayes was hit by a pitch. Junior first baseman Brandon Grant then lashed a two-run single to left, the runners advancing to second and third on an errant throw to the plate, before senior third baseman Nate Ulrich singled home Hayes. An errant pickoff throw by Prentice and a dropped fly ball in the outfield plated the final two runs of the inning for the visitors.
Cortland answered back with two runs in the bottom of the first. Senior third baseman Andrew Babcock singled to left before his brother sophomore shortstop Alex Babcock, reached on an infield error. After sophomore catcher James Lane walked to load the bases, senior right fielder Nikolai Tubbs singled into short left to make it a 5-2 game.
The Trojans scored their last run of the game — and, as it turned out, the day — in the third as, with two outs and a man on first, junior center fielder Logan Grihin hit an infield single and junior catcher Garrett Lewis singled to left to make it a 6-2 game.
Andrew Babcock walked with one out in the bottom of the third and eventually scored on a double to right-center by Lane to make it a 6-3 game. The winners then went ahead for good with a four-run fourth inning, sending nine men to the plate.
Senior designated hitter Aiden Stehm and junior first baseman Curtis Wilk both singled before Woods, the left fielder in the opener, walked to load the bases. Stehm scored on a sacrifice fly by senior second baseman Sage Brown doubled to right to bring Wilk home and Andrew Babcock hit a two-run single to left to plate two runs and make in a 7-6 game in favor of CHS.
The hosts tacked on an insurance run in the bottom of the sixth as Prentice led off with a single to right and eventually scored on a single up the middle by Alex Babcock.
Prentice didn’t allow any hits over the final four scoreless innings and improved to 2-0 on the season with a five hitter and six strikeouts.
“We made some mistakes in the first inning and they got some hits, little bobblers we could have had,” Prentice said. “I just kept pitching hard and throwing strikes and hitting my spots. We didn’t play our best in the first inning but got ourselves out of it and came out on top.”
Andrew Babcock went 2-for-3 with two RBIs and two runs scored, the only Purple Tiger among the eight who had hits to collect more than one. “It feels great,” he said. “We had to get our heads in the game, and knew we could pull it off. Justin pitched great, and I love just getting in there and hitting the ball.”
Cortland 10, Homer 0: The Purple Tigers did plenty of that in the second game — in which they were the visitors in the makeup of an earlier contest — rapping out 11 hits with Woods, even as he silenced the Trojans’ bats, wielded a big stick of his own, going 3-for-4 with a double, three RBIs and three runs. Sophomore first baseman Duff Steve (one run scored) and Tubbs both went 2-for-3 for the winners. In addition, the visitors committed seven errors in the game, three coming in a four-run Cortland fifth that ended any suspense concerning the final outcome.
The winners got all the runs they’d need when they scored three in the second. Woods singled home Stehm, who had reached on a fielder’s choice, with the first one, and the other two scored on an errant throw home on a fielder’s choice grounder by Brown and an infield error on a grounder by Andrew Babcock.
Woods doubled to the fence in right-center to lead off the fourth and scored on a single by Prentice, who was then forced at second on a fielder’s choice grounder by Brown, who in turn later scored on a wild pitch by Homer starter Casey Hayes, who took the loss.
Woods laced a two-run single up the middle to start the scoring in the fifth, the other two coming home on two Trojan errors on the same play later in the frame to make it 9-0. Woods then scored the last run of the game in the seventh, reaching on a fielder’s choice and scoring on an error.
“My slider was working, and it helped me to get a lot of first-pitch strikes,” said Woods, who retired the last 13 batters he faced on the night in order and is now 3-2 on the season. “I got locked in, and having three hits in the game I was able to help myself (on offense). We’re all starting to come together as a team.”
Cortland hosts Chittenango at 4:30 p.m. Thursday on Greg’s Field while Homer next sees action on Friday against visiting Marcellus at 4:30 p.m. in he first home game of the season.
— The junior varsity game between Homer and Cortland on Dave Guido Field was postponed by wet grounds and will be now played May 26 in Homer.
— Every member of the Cortland team wore teal laces in memory of 16-year-old Amie Leland, a schoolmate and a fan of the team who was murdered on Friday. Her initials were on the field in teal near the third-base coaching box, and the flag at Beaudry Park flew at half-staff.
“She’d been at our games and took a liking to the team, which meant a lot to us,” Albright said of Leland. “We wanted to show our support.”