Braves Wrap up 2016 in Western Championship
Tiffany Seal
FALMOUTH, Mass.–The Bourne Braves said farewell to their 2016 CCBL season with a playoff run that lasted till game 3 of the division championship, falling to regular season league-leading Falmouth Commodores, 6-2 Wednesday night.
Bourne’s Michael Adams (Towson) went for 2 1-3 innings, getting knocked around by Falmouth’s heavy-hitting lineup who notched two earned runs off five hits.
JJ Matijevic (Arizona) seemed to always be up at the right time, going 2 for 4 with a home run and double to come away with two RBIs on the night.
Falmouth broke the game open in the fifth by scoring four runs off Sean Leland (Louisville-) who gave up two earned runs off one hit with two walks-and Chad Luensmann (Nebraska) who lasted just a third of an inning, giving up two runs off three hits.
Coming out of the sixth, trailing 6-0, the Braves were unable to reverse their struggles at the plate, getting outhit 11-5 on the night.
Falmouth starter Brendan King (Holy Cross) went five innings of three-hit, scoreless baseball to notch the win and propel the Commodores to a matchup against back-to-back CCBL Champions, the Y-D Red Sox starting Thursday.
The Braves were outhit and out pitched Wednesday, with the Commodore staff pitching three-hit baseball until the ninth inning.
All was not lost on the night as the Braves pitching staff buckled down in the later innings to once again give Bourne a chance for a signature late-game rally, with both Jon Escobar (Holy Cross) pitching a hitless seventh inning followed up by Nick Johnson (Rhode Island) who surrendered just one hit in the eighth.
With two outs in the ninth and the summer coming to a close, the Braves managed to end the season on a light-hearted note when Danny Reyes (Florida) made a pinch-hit appearance with one out. Down to his last strike, head coach Harvey Shapiro decided to make another offensive switch for Grant Williams (Kennesaw State) who was on deck.
With a bag of candy in his back pocket and enjoying the last inning with his teammates, Jeremy Eierman (Missouri State) was called up to bat for Williams.
Down to their last out, with Connor Wong (Houston) at first after knocking a single, Eierman made sure the Braves would not get shutout of the last game.
After fouling off a pitch and taking a ball, Eierman went deep to left field to hit his first home run on the Cape and avoid a final game shutout, with the Braves ending their season shortly after with a 5-3 putout.
After two walk-off wins to propel themselves to a division championship, most fans who followed the team throughout the season saw them at their best and worst in a roller coaster summer.
It is safe to say that although the Braves finished three games short of their goal, they ended playing arguably the best baseball on the Cape. Besting a Wareham team that had swept the Braves in the regular season-only to be upset in two games, as the Braves went on to give the best team in the league a hard-fought battle in a three-game playoff.
With only two teams left, the Braves and seven other teams will have to look to 2017 to be the last two standing-just a short 362 days away until it starts all over again.
GBTG
