SALEM, N.H. – When June swings around in these parts, the rule is simple: If you can pitch, you can play.
Timberlane Regional has proven at just the right time that yes, indeed, the Owls can pitch. Wednesday afternoon, Timberlane closed out the regular season with its fifth straight win, 5-4, over a desperate Salem High squad.
The Owls head to the postseason at 9-11, having allowed just 11 runs during the current win streak.
“We’ve thrown a lot of strikes and been really good (as a staff). It’s been a mindset shift of all the pitchers. It’s not a ‘paint the corners, look cute’ game. It’s a ‘go attack them, we know we are going to be better,’” said lefty Kieran Lamb, who picked up the win with a gritty 6.1 innings of nine-hit, seven-strikeout ball against the Blue Devils. “We trust our offense, and our offense has been huge recently. Our defense has been huge, and it’s allowed our pitching to just be confident and go out there and throw strikes.
“These five straight, I think everyone on this team expected it. I don’t think anyone else did. I think we knew what we were capable of. We had a lot of real close games early that we just weren’t closing out. I think that was a big mental shift after our Senior Night. We said let’s go make a push. Let’s go be the team we know we can be. I think we’ve done that we’ve done that amazingly these last five games.”
Lamb was nasty with runners on, especially late in the game.
The teams played even at 2-2 through three innings, before Blue Devils catcher Kyle Giarrusso untied things with a solo homer to left-center in the fourth.
Frankie Carrasquillo re-tied things in the Owls fifth with a clutch, two-out RBI hit, and Timberlane took the lead for good in the sixth when James Hannaford leaped all over an inside heater and deposited it over the fence in left. Carter McIntyre delivered a two-out RBI for what proved to be a huge insurance run.
Lamb escaped the Salem sixth, putting two on with no outs. He got an out in the seventh then gave up a double to Patrick Ross and an RBI hit to Ryan Lopez.
On came Frankie Carrasquillo with the heat. With Lopez on second, he got a strikeout and a line-out to end it.
“We’re playing good baseball at the right time, which is encouraging,” said Owls coach Alex Horgan. “We’ve kind of turned it on and been able to put it together down the stretch here and make a little push toward the playoffs.
“(At 4-11), we talked about what we had to do to get better and play better baseball. We have done that since then. We got on a bit of a roll, and these guys are really buying in which has been great.”
Of course, it starts with the pitching.
“The pitchers have been great. Kieran has turned it on the second half of the year. He’s pitching at a different level,” said Horgan. “And then the two sophomores, Nate Hutchins and Robert Fellows, have been dynamite.
“Robert has been our unsung hero. He’s been out of the bullpen a bunch of times. He’s started some games. And Nate, we knew Nate was solid, but he goes out there and shuts down Bedford, then yesterday, he gives us two-and-a-half solid innings to shut down Portsmouth to hold that game for us. The two sophomores, the guts on them, have been awesome.”
Salem, now 6-12, takes on an even deeper state of urgency with two games left – at Merrimack on Thursday and at Portsmouth on Friday.