by Blake Buscemi
Danny Gargano shuts it down for the save, retiring Orologio to end it.
Final: South Shore 3, Riverhead 0 pic.twitter.com/BwCSJh0pmb— Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) June 21, 2022
Two Hamptons League squads in the Riverhead Tomcats and the South Shore Clippers battled it out at Veterans Memorial Park in Calverton Tuesday afternoon. I have covered two Clippers games already this season and they won both of them, so I had high expectations for them in this one.
The pitching matchup consisted of Pace’s Grant Biederman for the Tomcats and New Haven’s Matt Minio for the Clippers. Both pitchers had it working early on but suffered from some control issues. Minio induced two groundouts before hitting Sacred Heart’s Dante D’Amore with a pitch and walking Rutgers’ Jason Shockley with a pitch. He came out of the inning unscathed. Biederman put himself in a similar situation by walking Hofstra’s Matt Pelcher and Albany’s Ryan Ferremi. He also escaped the inning without allowing a run.
The bottom of the second inning had quite a bit of action, starting with singles by Creighton’s Jack Peluso and University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s Matt Tempone. Fortunately for Biederman, his defense was there to back him up as he induced three fly outs to right field, including a diving catch by University of Pennsylvania’s Nate Polo to end the inning.
The game stayed relatively quiet for a couple innings after this, with Minio and Biederman matching zeros inning after inning. Minio finished his day with four strikeouts and only two hits allowed in five innings of work. Biederman was removed from the game after the fourth, where University of Pennsylvania’s Will Tobin relieved him. Tobin has been extremely impressive in his outings so far this year, striking out nineteen batters while only walking one in ten innings of work. Unfortunately, he did not have his best stuff today as the Clippers put together a sequence of hits that resulted in an RBI single from Amherst’s Ryan McIntyre, RBI single from Bryant’s James Myler, and a sacrifice fly from Hofstra’s Aidan Larkin.
Matt Minio discusses what the key to his success was today and both him and his team’s goals are the rest of the season. pic.twitter.com/U0dK5c0jUv
— Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) June 21, 2022
The scoring completely shut down after this as all pitchers kept both sides scoreless for the remainder of the game. Rutgers’ Cole Hansen threw a scoreless inning for the Tomcats and Queens’ Danny Gargano had a phenomenal showing, tossing four scoreless frames to close out the game for the Clippers to improve his ERA to 2.16 on the year. The Clippers improve to 5-6 on the year, while the Tomcats sit at 3-8.
