Watterlond, Poll Lead East Granby into Class S Second Round

What an impressive turn of events for the baseball team.

Indeed, the Crusaders lost six of their first seven games, leading head coach Bob Bromage to lament that he didn’t have a No. 1 starter to help stop the bleeding.

Fast forward to Tuesday, when Brian Watterlond pitched a complete game to lead East Granby to a 4-3 victory over Old Saybrook in the first round of the state Class S tournament in East Granby. It was the team’s 12th victory in 14 games since that potentially disastrous start to the season.

“The kids have made a great turnaround,” Bromage said. “Tremendous turnaround.”

At the heart of it is Watterlond, who Bromage said earned his seventh straight victory on the mound since the team returned from its annual trip to Florida, where it went 0-2, including a 9-2 drubbing at the hands of Windsor Locks.

“He throws strikes, he mixes it up and he is an infielder, so it’s like having another infielder. He’s smart,” Bromage said of Watterlond, who went seven innings, yielding three runs on six hits while striking out four.

The Crusaders needed all of Watterlond’s cunning, as Old Saybrook was every bit East Granby’s equal. The Rams tormented the Crusaders on the basepaths with four stolen bases in the first four innings.

That led Bromage to tell Watterlond to change his approach.

“I told him in the fourth inning, ‘They’re stealing on every pitch,’” Bromage said. “Mix it up. Go to what we work on. Throw over twice, go to your long count, short count and get them [off balance],”

The end result was that Watterlond picked off two runners in the fifth and seventh innings, two key plays that helped preserve East Granby’s narrow margin of victory.

The Rams jumped out to a 1-0 lead in the top of the first when Robert Endrizzi hit a two-out RBI single to knock in starting pitcher Justin Beal.

East Granby leveled in the bottom of the second, when Gregory Poll scored from second on a throwing error.

Old Saybrook re-took the lead at 2-1 in the top of the third on an RBI single by Max Alden, scoring Steve Carlson who singled, stole second and advanced to third on an error.

East Granby regained the lead for good in the bottom of the third with a two-out, three run rally. Edward Lavoie laced an RBI single, and Poll followed with a two-run double that plated Connor Kennedy and Lavoie.

The Rams (10-11) were able to get one run back in the top of the fourth on Brendan McElhone’s RBI double.

But East Granby (13-8) was able to hold on, thanks in no small part to those two pickoffs.

“Those were two key points in the game; just tremendous,” Bromage said.

Old Saybrook head coach Steve Woods said that it was a tough loss, but it will serve as a valuable learning experience for his young squad.

“It’s a tough one to swallow,” Woods said. “In the state tournament, you can’t make little mistakes and we made a big error at the beginning of the game and we got picked off twice. Those little things will kill you in the state tournament.”

East Granby, the No. 15 seed, is scheduled to face No. 2 Derby today on the road.