Hartland Baseball Falls 7-0 to Warren DeLaSalle in Quarterfinals

MADISON HEIGHTS – It wasn’t a good day for Jake Lowery to have one of his worst starts of the season.

The Eagles’ ace didn’t make it out of the third inning in a 7-0 loss to Warren DeLaSalle in the Division 1 quarterfinals on Tuesday afternoon at Bishop Foley High School.

Lowery gave up all seven runs, five earned, in just 2 2/3 innings.

The junior, who is committed to play baseball at Michigan State University, couldn’t find the strike zone to open the game and the Pilots didn’t waste anytime taking advantage with five runs in the top of the first.

“I couldn’t find the location in that first inning,” Lowery said. “I was trying to find the lowest where the umpire liked it and the highest; in the meantime, they capitalized on my mistakes.”

He walked DeLaSalle’s leadoff hitter Joe Rydzewski on four pitches and then allowed four straight singles. Cole Clifton and Reed Carnagie each knocked in a run to make it 2-0. Clifton came around to score on a throwing error by right fielder Jordan Kesson.

After an interference call gave the Eagles (25-11-1) their the first out of the inning, Dominic DiPuma crushed a ball to right field to score two more runs and give his team a 5-0 lead.

“It’s hard enough to hit it where nobody is at, but they did it five times,” Hartland coach Bill Morrison said. “If any of those go to us, and we can make some plays, that inning isn’t such a big inning.”

Lowery came back in the second and hit Mike Abiragi, who came around to score on a sacrifice fly from Carnagie. In the third, Lowery walked Loria and DeLaSalle’s designated hitter scored on a throwing error by second baseman Jacob Jessen.

When Lowery headed to the dugout for Corey Lewandowski in the third, he had more baserunners to his name than outs. He gave up six hits, four walks and hit two batters while striking out only one.

“We knew Lowery was a good pitcher coming in, but we had never seen him before,” DeLaSalle coach Matt Cook said. “We face a lot of great pitching this year, the last couple weeks we saw a lot of great pitching, but we were confident. We were able to get after him with a great approach at the plate.”

The early lead gave Pilots starting pitcher Nick Ciaramitaro a big cushion to work with even though he didn’t really need it.

He found a groove early on and was able to limit Hartland to four hits over seven innings. He struck out four and allowed two walks in the shutout.

“Their pitcher did a very good job of keeping it low, keeping it right on the edge of the strike zone where we couldn’t hit the ball well,” Lowery said.

The only time Ciaramitaro ran into trouble was in the second inning when he loaded the bases with one out. Stephen Milarch stepped up to the plate and worked the count to 3-2 before striking out swinging. The inning ended when Spencer Wright hit a grounder up the middle right to the second baseman who quickly flipped it to Rydzewski.

“We get a hit there and we are right back in it,” Morrison said.

Lewandowski did his part to keep the Eagles in the game by not allowing any runs over his four-plus innings of work, but after the second inning Hartland didn’t get a runner past second base.

It helped that the defense behind Ciaramitaro was terrific. Rydzewski made three spectacular defensive plays at shortstop to rob Eagles' hitters of base hits.

“I love the kid,” Ciaramitaro said, smiling. “He’s only a sophomore and he’s great.”

The win completes an outstanding turnaround for a DeLaSalle squad (19-22-1) that at one point was 11 games under .500.

“We started off 2-14, definitely not the start we envision, but I told them to stay the course,” coach Matt Cook said.

Cook’s team advances to the semifinals at Battle Creek for a game against Howell on Friday afternoon.