Chiefs win, will meet Poultney a third time
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By POODY WALSH Herald Correspondent - Published: June 3, 2009
CHESTER — It couldn't have gotten much closer.
It was the last of the seventh inning and Green Mountain was leading 4-3 in its Division III playdown game with Winooski. The Spartans had the bases loaded with two outs and the count was 3-2 on Andrew Mahoney. Chieftain hurler Jason Albert would later say, "I knew I had to get it over the plate." And over the plate the pitch was, but that was not the end of the game. Mahoney hit it pretty hard but right at right fielder Ian Furrer, who squeezed it for the final out.
That was one of a number of happy events for the Chieftains, who later found out that No. 14 Poultney upset No. 3 Enosburg, 6-0, meaning the Chieftains will host Poultney in a quarterfinal game on Friday at 4:30 p.m.
The Chieftains are on a very hot streak, having won 10 of their last 11. That one loss in the streak was to Poultney, a team the Chiefs split with during the regular season.
While there was plenty of drama there was also some deep thinking by Green Mountain coach Eric Anderson. Albert is the ace of the staff and Anderson knew that if he threw 75 pitches or more Albert would not be available to pitch on Friday. So he had Albert go the first four innings, tossing 67 pitches, leaving with a 4-2 lead. Then when reliever Mike Cavacas couldn't find the strike zone in the seventh, Anderson brought Albert back in with the bases loaded and one out. He got a pop-up on his first pitch to Korey Marsh, but then went to 3-2 on Mahoney with the 74th pitch being the final out.
The first inning has been a big one for the Chieftains all season; they scored three times Tuesday and have scored in the first inning in 15 of their 16 games.
And it was a good thing they did as Winooski hurler Marsh gave up just two hits and one run after the first inning, but it was enough to win the game.
"They bunched their hits," said Winooski coach Dennis Filion. "But that's baseball. Our pitcher was great today. He deserved a better fate."
Marsh threw 90 pitches, striking out eight and getting a lot of mileage out of a slow curve. He walked just two.
The No. 11 Spartans finish the season at 8-9. Green Mountain, the sixth seed that once was 1-4, is now 11-5.
The only dark side of the Green Mountain effort was a couple of missed foul pops in the field that led to two Winooski runs.
"When you give a team an extra out it usually burns you," said Anderson who said his Chiefs were in for a long hitting and fielding practice on Wednesday.
Both of Marsh's walks came in the first inning and both runners scored. Alex Munroe had a one-out double before Marsh lost the plate and walked Albert and Alex Holl to load the bases. Dominic Strohmeyer followed with a drive to left-center that looked like it had a chance of being caught, forcing the runners to hold up. But it dropped for a long single with only Munroe being able to score. Colton Howard then got the biggest offensive blow of the day with a single up the middle, scoring Albert and Holl.
The Chiefs got the lead to 4-0 in the second when Justin Veysey bunted for a single, was sacrificed to second by Munroe and scored as the throw to get him when he was stealing third went into left field.
However, that was the run production for the day for the Chiefs as Marsh buttoned things up, allowing just two base runners the rest of the game. One of those base runners was Strohmeyer, who came within a couple of feet of hitting a homer as his drive bounced off the fence in left-center.
The Spartans cut the lead to 4-2 in the fourth in an inning that had a Edison Wheelock single and Chris Blais triple, but three Chieftain errors were also thrown into the mix
Albert was relieved by Cavacas at the start of the fifth and he used just 13 pitches to get through the next two innings. The seventh inning was different story as he walked the bases loaded and gave up a run-producing single to No. 9 hitter Ryan Fitzgerald. It was at that point Albert was summoned back into the game
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