SOUTH BERWICK — Behind strong starting pitching from senior Andrew Gray and the offensive contributions of two freshmen, Marshwood High got the win it has been looking for in Class A South baseball, beating Westbrook 5-0 Tuesday.
“This was a good game to get. This was our first win against a team that has eight, nine wins,” said Marshwood’s second-year coach Eric Wells.
Gray, a senior right-hander with a lively fastball, recovered from early control issues to get the win, allowing three hits with six strikeouts over six innings. Charlie Winter worked the seventh for Marshwood (6-6-1).
After throwing 59 pitches and stranding six runners through three innings, Gray needed only 27 pitches to get the next nine outs. Catcher Henry Dimmerling threw out Westbrook runners at second to end the fourth and fifth innings. A diving backhand grab in center by Noah Fitzgerald also helped.
“When I first came out I was all over the place,” Gray said. “Walked a couple guys. Then like two innings later I really found it. Definitely a good win.”
Marshwood freshmen Liam Tierney and Tyler Hussey, batting seventh and eighth, each reached base in all three at-bats. Tiernan, who played third, was 1 for 2, was hit by a pitch, reached on an error and scored two runs, on a steal of home in the second and trotting in on Fitzgerald’s deep sacrifice fly in the fourth.
Hussey, playing second, went 3 for 3 with a run scored and an RBI single.
“We inserted them into the lineup last week and just felt like we needed to shake some things up,” Wells said. “They play the style of ball I like. They play hard and they compete.”
Westbrook (8-4-1), which entered fourth in the A South standings, lost its third straight game after a five-game win streak. The early success was welcomed after a two-win season in 2021 but it also served notice to the rest of the league.
“We know that we kind of set the stage for ourselves with big wins early in the year that we’re going to get teams’ best every time out and we’ve seen that over the last week or so,” said Westbrook first-year coach Adam Begos. “It’s a position we haven’t really been in the past couple years. It makes it fun, because we’re in the mix. We need to embrace that and match the energy level of the other teams.”
Westbrook made four errors behind starting pitcher Ben Eugley, who allowed six hits. In the second inning, after two errors kept the inning alive, Marshwood scored twice on two-out steals of home. Both came with runners at first and third after the runner at first purposely got into a rundown.
“We’ve been struggling with scoring with two outs and guys in scoring position so we just got some guys in motion and make stuff happen and it worked out well today,” Wells said.
Eugley said he expects Westbrook to recover quickly.
“We just had an off day with hitting. We’ll work on that in practice,” Eugley said. “We’ll bounce back from this. It’s a good group of guys.”
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