BUCKLAND — After splitting a pair of regular-season games each by one run, Thursday’s tournament meeting between Mohawk Trail Regional High School and Mahar Regional School didn’t figure to play out much differently.
Host Mohawk got a sizable early jump with four runs in the bottom of the first inning of their Western Massachusetts Division III baseball first-round game, and Warriors pitcher Torsten Sloan Anderson made that lead stand up by tossing no-hit ball into the sixth inning. Mahar finally hit back with a three-run sixth to tighten up the game, but that’s as close as the Senators would get, as Mohawk got off its home turf with a 5-3 victory.
Julian Diamond and Adam Hallenbeck led the sixth-seeded Warriors (15-6) with two hits and two RBI apiece, while Gabe Seaver also drove in a run. Hallenbeck relieved Sloan Anderson in the sixth and worked out of a one-out, bases-loaded jam to eventually earn the save, ending the game on a pop-fly double play.
“Mahar’s a good team, they showed their resilience, and you can never take them lightly,” said Mohawk coach Bill Buck. “I told the kids that we needed outs, and outs are our friends. They stuck with it and got out of that (sixth) inning.
“We put people in motion (in the first inning), we had three hit-and-runs, two of them were successful. If we’re going to win games, we’ve got to pitch and play defense. We played fantastic defense, and I thought Torsten pitched well for the five innings he was in there.”
Meanwhile, Mahar coach Art Billings, who saw his 11th-seeded Senators wrap their season at 10-11, could only lament the rough first-inning start in which starting pitcher Hunter Richardson was lifted after retiring only one of the six batters he faced.
“We’ve been in all these close games, and sometimes we just miss that timely hit,” said Billings. “We had the bases loaded in the fifth inning, before we did start scoring, and couldn’t push a run across. I give it to them in the first inning. We made a couple of mistakes, and we dug ourselves a hole. But we showed a lot of poise, we didn’t quit, we kept battling. You don’t find many special groups like that.”
Sloan Anderson walked Mahar’s Jed Richardson to lead off the game, but then set down the next nine batters in a row and 13 of the next 14. Mohawk got going immediately when Dan Szafran led off with an infield hit and continued to second on a throwing error, then went to third on Justin Ward’s single to left-center. Sloan Anderson grounded out to third as Ward advanced to second, and Diamond spiked a single to left-center to bring in Szafran and Ward for a 2-0 Warrior lead.
Hallenbeck then clubbed a double to right field to plate Diamond, and Seaver singled up the middle for a 4-0 lead, ending Hunter Richardson’s brief time on the mound. He and catcher Ryan Arsenault switched places. Seaver moved up to second on an errant pickoff try and Levin Dupree reached on an error, then stole second, putting men at second and third with only one out. From there, Arsenault bore down, recording a strikeout and a foul popout to close out the inning.
The Senators then nicely turned a 6-4-3 double play to get out of the second, but Mohawk tacked on its fifth run in the home third. Diamond led off with a single to center and stole second base, and Hallenbeck rang his second double to deep left field as Diamond scored. Hallenbeck was retired trying to advance to third. Seaver was hit by a pitch, but pinch-runner Sam Smithers was gunned out trying to steal second, and Arsenault induced a fly ball to left off Dupree’s bat.
“Ryan really showed a lot of determination,” said Billings of Arsenault’s 5 -inning relief role. “You can see it in his face. You know when he wants it, and he really wanted it today.”
Trailing 5-0, Mahar had only two men reach base, both on walks, through the first 4 innings. That’s when Sloan Anderson showed his first signs of laboring, issuing back-to-back walks to Sam Paul and Tyreece Younger. Zach Geyster tapped back to the mound and Sloan Anderson threw out Paul at third, but Jed Richardson walked to load the bases. Miller Richardson then lined out to the onrushing Szafran in center field to end the Senators’ threat.
That gave Mahar the momentum it needed, as Arsenault led off the sixth with a walk and Liam Bashista reached on a grounder to the right side where Sloan Anderson failed to hold the feed while covering first. With Hunter Richardson batting, Arsenault swiped third base, and Richardson ended the no-hit bid with a shot back through the box that caromed off Sloan Anderson and ended up in short right field. Arsenault scored to make it 5-1, and after over 100 pitches, Buck replaced Sloan Anderson (six walks, three strikeouts) with Hallenbeck.
“When he came in after the fifth, I said to him, ‘Torsten, look me in the eye. How are you feeling?’” said Buck. “‘I can do it, Coach, I’m pitching a no-hitter.’ I said, ‘I don’t give a you-know-what about a no-hitter.’ But it was in his mind. We had to get the first batter and see what happens after that.”
Mason Dow kept the line moving against Hallenbeck with a single to right to load the bases. Paul struck out, but Younger shot a single into right-center, bringing home Bashista and Richardson to pull Mahar to with 5-3. Geyster walked to reload the bags, and then Mohawk third baseman Taylor McCloud provided the defensive gem of the day.
Jed Richardson grounded sharply to the left side and McCloud smothered the ball while going to the ground. He may have been able to tag third base at the cost of a run, but instead he whirled and threw home to Diamond to force out Dow. The bases remained loaded, but Miller Richardson flied out to Seth Donovan in left field, allowing the Warriors to maintain their two-run cushion.
“That was the turning point of the whole inning,” said Buck of McCloud’s play. “He made a great stop. I don’t think he even knew where he was throwing it.”
Arsenault held Mohawk in check offensively over the last three innings, allowing a pair of two-out baserunners in the home sixth. Mahar would get the tying run to the plate in the top of the seventh after Bashista drew a walk with one out. Hunter Richardson lifted a fly ball on the right side of the infield that second baseman Colton Yezierski gloved on the run, then trapped Bashista off first base for the game-ending double play.
Next up for Mohawk is a quarterfinal-round date at No. 3 seed Frontier Regional School (15-3) Monday at 4 p.m. in South Deerfield. The Red Hawks claimed a 12-1 victory over the Warriors April 20 in their only regular-season meeting.