GREENFIELD — Just over a week after its epic 17-inning victory in the Western Mass. Class C championship, Greenfield made a far more businesslike entrance into the MIAA Division 5 state baseball tournament Sunday.
The Green Wave left little to chance by piling up all seven runs in the first three innings en route to a 7-0 blanking of Bartlett in the Round of 32 at Veterans Memorial Field.
Bodie Burke and Conner Bergeron combined to throw a three-hitter with 10 strikeouts for the fifth-seeded Wave (16-5), who advanced to a Round of 16 home game Wednesday at 4 p.m. against either Ware or Keefe Tech of Framingham. Those two teams meet tonight in their Round of 32 matchup.
At the plate, Bergeron led Greenfield with three hits and two RBI while Urijah Jenness and Malik Moore had two hits each, part of a 10-hit offensive. Arthur Fitzpatrick also drove in a pair of runs..
“I didn’t see a lot of fire in them today, it just didn’t seem to me like we were 100 percent into it,” said Green Wave coach Tom Suchanek. “We scored three right off the bat, Bodie pitched pretty well, Conner threw two good innings, We got it done, and we’ll see what’s next.”
Bartlett made the trip from Webster to Greenfield for the second straight year in state tournament play. In the 2025 Division 5 Round of 16, the Green Wave, then seeded eighth, ousted the No. 9 seed Indians, 7-3.
The visitors led off Sunday’s game with a single from Hunter Claypool, but he was promptly trapped in a rundown and tagged out between first and second. Burke then struck out the next two batters. The only other hit he allowed was a two-out double to Jacob Macomber in the second.
Claypool had two of Bartlett’s three hits. The Indians (4-14), seeded 28th, never had more than one runner reach base in an inning.
With one out in the Greenfield first, facing Macomber, Bergeron drove a single to left, moved to second on a balk, and Chase Zraunig was hit by a pitch. Luca Siano then lifted a fly ball to right-center that was dropped, loading the bases, and Fitzpatrick made the error hurt with an opposite-field base hit to right, plating Bergeron and Zraunig. Siano took third and came in on a two-out single to right by Moore.
After getting two men aboard in the second without scoring, the Green Wave was back at work in the home third, helped by a pair of costly errors by the Indians. Jenness singled into the right-field corner and missed out on extra bases when he fell between first and second, but managed to scramble back to first. Moore reached on an infield single and continued to second on a wild throw to first, with Jenness reaching third.
Ninth hitter Sam Bucala dropped an RBI single into left as Jenness scored, and Burke followed with an infield hit to bring in Moore, moving up to second on a throwing error. Bergeron spiked a single to left, his third hit of the afternoon, scoring Bucala and Burke for a 7-0 Wave lead.
Afterward, the Green Wave loaded the bases with two out in the sixth, on a pair of walks and an error, but were held off the board.
Burke walked one and struck out six in his five innings on the mound, while Bergeron recorded four strikeouts in two innings of relief, including the last two outs of the game.
