Cosmos top Phantoms, 9-5

Boys baseball at Proctor.
http://rutlandherald.com/article/20140520/SPORTS02/705209905

Published May 20, 2014 in the Rutland Herald Cosmos top Phantoms, 9-5 By JAMIE NORTON Correspondent PROCTOR — The Cosmos could get used to this. Springfield’s baseball team – one that coach Archie Farmer admits has struggled to hit the ball and score runs at times this season – showed no such difficulty in its game at Proctor on Monday. The Cosmos collected 10 hits – four for extra bases – in pulling past the Phantoms, 9-5, to pick up their third win of the year. Kyle Weeks had two of those extra-base hits, ripping both a triple and a double out of the No. 9 hole, while Zack Tubbs had two hits, including a triple. Tanner Shumski had an RBI double, and Cosmos pitchers Cam Blais and Brighten Fontaine nabbed two hits apiece. “It’s been a long time coming,” Farmer said. “The ball was definitely flying off the bat a little bit. We finally got the timing down and started making good contact. Hopefully, we’re breaking out of our slump from the first half of the season.” “We’re playing good baseball, we just had that one bad inning,” Proctor coach Mike Perrone said. “That’s what’s been killing us all year – that one bad inning where they put up a crooked number on us.” The inning to which Perrone was referring was the top of the fourth. That was when the Cosmos, trailing 2-1, put a four-spot on the board courtesy of three hits, two walks and two errors. One of those misplays came after a third strike hit the dirt and the catcher’s errant throw to first allowed Springfield to score the tying and go-ahead runs. Weeks’ three-bagger, as well as Blais and Shumski’s two-base hits, all came in that frame, too, as the visitors took a 5-2 lead and never looked back. “I think that (error on strike three) kind of lit a little fire under us and got us a little bit of momentum going into the rest of the game,” Farmer said. “I think we did a better job today than we have in the past of putting it behind us,” Perrone said. “But still, four runs in that inning where it could have been zero – that was tough.” Kyle White’s RBI groundout made it 6-2 in the fifth, but the Phantoms closed the gap to 6-4 in their half of the sixth with run-scoring singles from Jacob Tomilson and Shaun Blanchard. But the Cosmos weren’t quite finished yet. Two more hits, two more errors, and a walk led to three more runs in the top of the seventh. The Phantoms could only muster one in the bottom half – getting that from Kyle Miles in the form of a two-out RBI double. It was Miles’ second run-scoring deuce of the game, the first coming in Proctor’s two-run first during which Tomilson added his first RBI single of the day. Perrone wants his boys to work on scoring more consistently, instead of in the peaks-and-valleys approach to which they’ve grown accustomed. “We’ve got to play a full seven innings,” he said. “When we do score, it seems we score three runs, four runs, two runs in an inning, and we’ve just got to keep on putting that up throughout the game. Every time we do score, it is in a bunch, and then we have those lulls. “I don’t know if it’s focus or what, but we’ve got to put it all together.” Farmer, meanwhile, is just happy his team is hitting the ball. “We’re a very young team, and we’ve been making contact, but today the ball started to fall in,” he said. “It’s good to start hitting the ball at the end (of the season) ... We’re hitting the ball, we’re fielding good, we’re not making too many errors. I think we’re on the right path.” Blais and Fontaine combined to strike out eight and allow just five hits and two walks for the 3-7 Cosmos, who host Black River on Wednesday. Blanchard took the loss for 1-7 Proctor, which travels to face West Rutland today.