HADLEY – Tyler Baranowski pointed to the sky with his back toward home plate.
Frontier center fielder Sam Schreiber stood up with the baseball trapped in his glove. He just laid out horizontally to snag a deep fly ball into the gap and end the Redhawks’ 4-1 win over host Hopkins Academy on Monday. Had it dropped, the Golden Hawks would have scored a run and brought the tying run to the plate. Instead, Frontier won its third straight game to open the season.
Baranowski, a senior, struck out a career-high 14 batters (of the 21 outs in a seven-inning game) but wanted to recognize the defense his fielders played behind him, acknowledging he wouldn’t be in that position without them.
“Knowing that I have them in the outfield lets you breathe a little easier,” Baranowski said.
Baranowski didn’t give the Golden Hawks much time to inhale or exhale. He worked quickly and was regularly ahead in the counts. The senior allowed just five hits in his second victory of the season and walked only two.
“We just keep switching things up, a lot of junk pitches, nothing good,” Frontier catcher Dylan Martin said. “We were reading batters, and Tyler just did his thing.”
He had to escape a jam early. Cody West singled with one out in the first inning, and Patrick Fitzgibbons walked to put two on. A fielder’s choice moved West to third, but Baranowski struck out Yuki Ishida looking to end the inning. His first four punchouts were looking.
“Once I find the groove after getting out of a jam, it definitely helps to go the distance with that,” Baranowski said.
He operated with a lead for most of the game. With one out in the top of the second, Baranowski and Alex Gochinski single. Shane Prusak moved them to second and third with a sacrifice bunt, then Martin sent a double to right field that scored both of them.
Tyler Dubreuil followed with an RBI single to make it 3-0.
“It eases the nerves. Every time we play Hopkins the stakes are extremely high,” Frontier coach Chris Williams said. “It seems like it’s one-two with us finishing in the league each year. It put us in a good spot right out of the gate.”
Schreiber tacked on a sacrifice fly to make it 4-0 in the fifth. In between and throughout, Hopkins starter Andrew Ciaglo kept pace with Baranowski. He threw a complete game and allowed seven hits with five strikeouts.
The Redhawks threatened to add more in the top of the seventh after Martin and Dubreuil opened with singles. Martin reached third on a failed pickoff throw, and Dubreuil went to second on a passed ball, giving Frontier runners on second and third with no outs. Schreiber laced a lineout right at Fitzgibbons at short, who threw to third to double up Martin with the runners moving. Ciaglo struck out Kevin Baumann looking to give the Golden Hawks a shot in the bottom half of the inning.
The senior also laced three of the Golden Hawks five hits – all sharp singles — and scored the team’s only run in the fifth. After his leadoff single, West grounded out to put him at second. Fitzgibbons shot an RBI single up the middle to bring him around and cut it to 4-1.
But Hopkins, the defending state champions, couldn’t string together enough hits to overtake the Redhawks.
“We made a couple mental mistakes we need to fix. I think youth has a bit to play with it, but at the end of the day you can’t put youth in your record, you have to put wins in it,” Hopkins coach Dan Vreeland said. “We’ve got to fix our approach because we shot ourselves in the foot against a pitcher who you cannot shoot yourselves in the foot against.”
■ Frontier won the JV game, 16-0, behind a five-RBI performance from Tyler Cusson.
Kyle Grabowski can be reached at kgrabowski@gazettenet.com. Follow him on Twitter @kylegrbwsk.