The Sag Harbor Whalers as of Monday led the six-team Hamptons Collegiate Baseball League with a 9-7 record, trailed by the North Fork Ospreys, the Westhampton Aviators, the Southampton Breakers, the Shelter Island Bucks, and the South Shore Clippers.
The defending champions, who are coached by Jake Tobin and Bianca Smith, won both ends of a doubleheader played with the Ospreys at Sag Harbor’s Mashashimuet Park on June 28 by scores of 3-2 and 5-3. Then came single-game losses to the Clippers and Bucks, though, on Sunday, the Whalers, playing again at Mashashimuet, split a twin bill with the Breakers.
“We’re beginning to jell as a team,” Tobin said after Sunday’s games. “It’s such a beautiful thing to see. These kids, in all shapes and sizes, and from all sorts of backgrounds, coming from all over the world and putting aside their differences to play together on a team for the summer. It gives you hope for the future of the planet. It makes me feel good.”
Daniel Laderman, a versatile outfielder who plays for Israel’s national team, went two-for-three at bat in Sunday’s opener, which the Whalers won 10-3, with “a big double in the second that scored our second and third runs.” Cole Forcellina, who started and threw for three innings, was the winning pitcher. “We awarded him four stars,” said Tobin, who handles the Whaler pitchers, “for getting weak-contact outs on four of his first pitches.”
Jack McLaughlin and Steven Mazza also pitched in Sunday’s first game.
In the second game, the Whalers led 4-3 going into the top of the seventh inning, but Tobin’s relievers could not hang on as the home team succumbed 7-4.
In game one on the 28th, East Hampton’s Tucker Genovesi got it going for the Whalers with a solid double in the bottom of the first that put runners at second and third for Josh Parks, the cleanup hitter, who promptly doubled them both in.
Max Hart, the Whalers’ starter, a tall left-hander, held the Ospreys in check through the first five innings, but gave way to Patrick Teehan with no outs, the bases loaded, and one run in in the top of the sixth. A subsequent sacrifice fly tied the score at 2-2, but Teehan prevented further damage by striking out the Ospreys’ fifth hitter and retiring the sixth on a second-to-first groundout.
Parks, Ethan Sarmiento, and Lucas Pierce, the Whalers’ fourth, fifth, and sixth hitters, could get nothing going in the bottom of the sixth. Two terrific sliding catches by Nico Banez in right field saved the Whalers in the top of the seventh, and Gabe Caso, the Whalers’ fleet catcher, doubled to lead off the bottom of the seventh, drawing cheers from his teammates in the dugout. A wild pitch enabled Caso to advance to third. A walk put runners at the corners for Wyatt Benson, the ninth hitter in the lineup, who singled up the middle, plating Caso with the winning run.
Asked about Olivia Pichardo, the first female to play for a Division 1 team (Brown University) and a pitcher-outfielder with the Whalers, Tobin said he had no doubt she could pitch for the USA Baseball women’s national team. “She’s pitched for us a few times — she’s one of our better arms out of the bullpen.”
Genovesi, he added, was making good contact, “but he’s getting robbed a lot, hitting the ball at people. But that’s baseball.”
The Whalers are to play single games on Shelter Island today and tomorrow, at 5 p.m. The Ospreys are to play at Mashashimuet on Sunday at 5, and the Bucks are to play there on Monday, also at 5. On Tuesday, the Whalers are to play the Clippers on their field at Bellport High School. On Wednesday the Whalers are to play the Ospreys at Cochran Park in Peconic at 7 p.m., and next Thursday the Whalers are to play South Shore in Bellport at 5.