The South Windsor Bobcats baseball team hosted the Manchester Redhawks on Wednesday, May 14th for the second meeting between the two teams of the season, with the previous game resulting in a 5-3 Bobcats win.
Junior Brayden Edwards took the mound for the ‘Cats and was lights out from the get go. Edwards set down Manchester in order to send the game to the home half of the first.
Edwards led off the bottom of the first with a base hit and found himself on third after an error in trying to field senior Sam Balducci’s single. Senior Robert Wunsch walked to load the bases for fellow senior, Jake Palombizio.
Palombizio watched as ball four sailed across the plate to score the game’s opening run. Freshman Tyler Poland followed soon after with a sacrifice fly to score Balducci.
Soon after, senior Jake Gombotz launched a bases-clearing double over the left fielder’s head to score three, before coming in to score on a Manchester error. When all was said and done in the first inning, the ‘Cats led 6-0.
Edwards sailed smoothly until the third inning. Some sloppy plays in the field produced three unearned runs to make it a 6-3 game, but Edwards bunkered down and escaped the jam.
The Bobcats offense didn’t remain as fiery as the first inning, but hits from Wunsch, Dittmar, and Gombotz eventually added a seventh run to the board to extend the lead to four.
Edwards continued his domination of the Redhawks lineup and soon found himself with two outs in the top of the seventh and on 108 pitches, allowing him to finish off the last batter of the game being perfectly shy of the pitch limit rule of 109.
After getting ahead quickly in the count, Edwards fired a bullet that was swung on and missed to end the game with a 7-3 Bobcats victory.
Following the game, Edwards spoke to The Prowl, saying “I felt I had good command of all my pitches and the offense helped me early coming out with a big first inning.”
Edwards’ final line featured seven innings pitched, zero earned runs, just three hits, only one walk, and 13 strikeouts, a career high for the junior southpaw.
Gombotz drove in three and went 2-4 at the dish to propel the ‘Cats offense, as well as playing stellar defense behind the plate all game long. “It was a well played game, pitching was dominant and our defense made the plays. If we play like this every game, we give ourselves a really good shot,” Gombotz said.
The Bobcats now sit at 14-3, already surpassing last season’s win total and sitting at third in class LL.
On Friday, May 16th, the scorching hot ‘Cats are back in action for senior night at 6 PM for a battle with Valley Regional, looking to get revenge for the loss to the Warriors from just one season ago.
