Baseball: Amity Loses to Foran, 1-0

Foran High  left-hander Ryan Manning struck out eight, walked one and allowed only one hit (a third inning single by Nick Baviello) as he hurled the Lions to a 1-0 Southern Connecticut Conference inter-divisional victory over Amity Saturday afternoon at Brinley Field in Orange. Manning (now 5-1) is the only hurler that has blanked the Spartans this spring. The quickie contest lasted only an hour and 50 minutes.
To make matters even tougher for Amity to swallow, the Lions’ one run was unearned. Foran designated hitter Cody Hadden led off the top of the third inning with a sharp single into right-center field and moved over to second base on Stan Olsson’s successful sacrifice bunt. Tyler Schumitz ripped a two-hopper that was gloved by sophomore third baseman Keith Klebart, but his throw to first base was off the mark. It caromed off the fence behind first base and began to roll toward right field. That error by Klebart (who was filling in at the hot corner for Mark Esposito, who recently pulled a ham string muscle and is now sidelined for the remainder of the season) allowed Hadden to score from second base and advanced Schumitz over to third base. Amity pitcher E.J. Ashworth avoided further damage by retiring the next two Foran batters and left Schumitz stranded 90 feet from home plate.
“Their pitcher was great. He was really in the groove. This is the second time this spring that he beat us. Last time Foran beat us 5-4, Spartan Coach Sal Coppola said. “He is sneaky fast and mixed speeds really well. He threw all three of his pitchers (fast ball, curve, and slider) for strikes. We usually hit guys that throw hard, but a lot of teams, including us, have trouble sometimes with guys who throw off-speed pitches.”
With one out in the bottom of the sixth inning, Baviello lofted a long fly ball that backed Schumitz, the Lion right fielder to the fence, where he snagged Baviello’s long blast. That was the closest bid the Spartans had for a second base hit.
While he took the loss and lowered his record to 5-2, Coppola insisted that Amity senior E.J. Ashworth (who allowed no earned runs and only four hits) pitched an outstanding game.
He said, “E.J. pitched incredibly well and certainly deserved a better fate. He throws in the low 80’s but unfortunately, we didn’t support him with any hits. Normally, we are a good hitting team. Our biggest problem was our inability to bunt the ball. We wanted to bunt and hopefully get him (Manning) out of his comfort zone, but we weren’t able to execute on any of the three times we tried to drop down a bunt. That’s very disappointing to me because we worked on our bunting in practice this week.”
Coppola also admitted that some people saw this as a throw-away game,  as it was  non-divisional and all SCC playoff spots were previously locked up, but then added, “Like most teams, we want to play our best baseball at the end of the season. We want to look crisp, but for some unknown reason, we had an off day and looked like we were moping around. We didn’t seem to play with as much spark as we usually do.”
Hadden led the 13-6 winners with a single, a two-out double in the top of the seventh inning and scored the game’s only run. Sean Caraglio singled twice for the Hammonasset Division champs..
The two teams meet for the third time on Tuesday night at Quigley Stadium in the quarter-finals of the SCC play-offs. The game gets underway at 7 PM. Mike Concato is expected to be Amity’s starting pitcher.