It may have taken a few innings to get it in gear, but once it did, the Lynnfield Pioneers baseball team was firing on all cylinders at home Monday in a 10-0 win over No. 33 South Hadley in the opening round of the Division 4 tournament.
Senior captain David Tracy collected the win, tossing 5 1/3 innings of three-hit ball. He struck out seven and walked five. He also got the job done at the plate, going 2-for-3 with an RBI.
“David pitched kind of a gutsy game. The walks were uncharacteristic and hurt him a little,” head coach John O’Brien said. “He was throwing pretty well and then, for some reason, kept burying the ball, but we got out of it with the guys making some great plays. Cole Hawes did a great job catching behind the plate and I think we only had one strikeout so the kids put the ball in play. When you can do that, good things happen.”
The Pioneers had not played in nine days. Early on, the game was anyone’s to win with Lynnfield clinging to a 2-0 lead after three, the big hit was an RBI single from senior captain Anthony Grabau (2-for-3, run, RBI).
But once they figured out how to dust off the cobwebs, the Pioneers broke the game wide open with four runs in the fifth and four more in the sixth.
The fifth inning began uneventfully with two routine outs, one a fly to right and the other a grounder to second. After that, it was lights out. Tracy singled up the middle. Madux Iovinelli (2 runs) walked. Senior captain Owen Mullin (1-for-4, 2 runs, 2 RBI) ripped an RBI single, scoring courtesy runner Charlie Morgan (running for Tracy). Dylan Damiani (1-for-2, run) blasted a two-run double, scoring Iovinelli and Mullin to make it a 5-0 game. Damiani in turn advanced to third on a passed ball and scored on an infield error.
Junior captain and 2024 Cape Ann League Player of the Year Tyler Adamo (1-for-2, 2 runs) led off the sixth with a double. Nick Groussis (1-for-3, run, RBI) sacrificed him to third. Grabau was hit by a pitch, putting Pioneer runners at first and third for Tracy, who came up clutch again with an RBI single, scoring Adamo. After a walk to Iovinelli, Mullin reached on a fielder’s choice with Grabau coming around to score. After Damiani walked and DH Luke DiSilvio was hit, Mullin scored the Pioneers’ final run on a wild pitch.
O’Brien, this year’s CAL Coach of the Year, attributed the good start to “two good days of practice.”
“The kids have been working really hard,” he said. “We had hoped to play this game yesterday but that didn’t happen. We did have a couple of times today that I chalk up to laziness, especially early when we made some mistakes that you just cannot make.”
The Pioneers are back in action in the Round of 16 at home against No. 17 Oxford (too late to print).
