Danvers Dominates Townies in Home Opener

[Editor’s Note: This article has been updated with a correction. Due to a reporter’s error, the grades of some of the Falcons’ returning players were incorrectly stated.]

Danvers High baseball got off to a solid start Wednesday afternoon with a shutout of the visiting Charlestown team.

The hallmark of a Roger Day coached team has always been that it plays a fundamentally sound game and rarely beats itself on errors or by over-thinking plays. Coming off an impressive 15-8 season that saw the Falcons advance to the Division 2 North semi-finals, Day hopes to return to the tournament this spring.

“We are replacing a lot of last year’s team. We will have four or five starters who will need to throw strikes. One of our greatest strengths will be the senior leadership we will get from captains Nick Gikas, Zach Ryan and Greg Little,” said Day. “At the same time, we face the challenges of needing to establish experienced pitching and catching, along with team speed and getting some consistent hitting at the bottom of the order,” he said.

All of those things and more were in evidence Wednesday. It was clear from the opening frame that the Townies were simply over-matched in every facet of the game. By the end of the second inning, the Falcons held a 7-0 lead. Charlestown was unable to do anything at the plate with five of the first six batters striking out. In the field, the Townies’ play was riddled with misjudgments and flat out errors. The end of the third inning saw Danvers up by eight runs and Coach Day able to make good use of the bench players.

In looking ahead to the rest of the season, Day said the ones to watch this season are sophomores Scott Hovey and Dan Connors, juniors Connor Kelleher (who is coming off hand surgery) and Nick Valles and seniors Ray Arocho and T.J. Stanley. 

“One of our main goals is to throw strikes and be an aggressive, tough, fundamentally sound team that won’t beat ourselves and will pressure other teams.”

While Danvers will face some very tough teams this year, if Wednesday’s game is any indication the Falcons should have a very interesting season that will be very enjoyable to watch.

Next up for the Falcons is Saugus on April 13 (4 p.m.) and Swampscott April 15 (4 p.m.) back in Danvers at .