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SteepleCats Edged at Home
By Stephen Dravis, iBerkshires.com Sports
08:23PM / Sunday, July 02, 2017
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NORTH ADAMS, Mass. -- One Tuesday, the North Adams SteepleCats will cap their game with the traditional fireworks show.
 
The team’s fans only can hope the team will not save all the fireworks for the end.
 
Vermont’s pitchers scattered nine hits and stranded eight runners Sunday en route to a 3-2 win over the SteepleCats at Joe Wolfe Field.
 
The loss was North Adams’ fourth in its last five games, a stretch in which it has scored just 10 runs.
 
“We’re getting hits, but we’re just not getting the big hit,” SteepleCats coach Stu Pederson said after his team slipped to 8-11 this summer. “We’re not getting one when we need it.
 
“I think they take a lot of fastballs. They take a lot of fastballs for strikes. … I’m not up there [at the plate], so I can’t tell you what they’re thinking. I can only tell you what it looks like.”
 
Vermont (7-11) touched North Adams Starter Blake Whitney for a run in the top of the fourth to break a scoreless game and took a 3-0 lead against reliever Braxton Wilks in the sixth.
 
North Adams rallied for a pair of runs in the bottom of the sixth.
 
Taylor Lane led off with a single up the middle, and Liam Sabino doubled him home to get the home team on the board.
 
Sabino moved up on a ground ball to the right side by Ryan Schalch and scored when Tyler Walters reached on an error.
 
But Vermont turned a double play to end that threat, and the ‘Cats got nothing off Vermont reliever Luis Acosta, who worked three no-hit innings, striking out seven in the process.
 
Prior to Acosta’s arrival, North Adams left eight men on base in the first six innings and had a particularly frustrating fifth.
 
Trailing by a score of 1-0, the ‘Cats got hits from their first four batters, but the first two were thrown out attempting to steal second base, and the team came up with nothing to show for its offense.
 
That made a hard-luck loser of Whitney, who struck out seven and allowed three hits and just the one run in five innings. For the season, he has a 1.55 earned run average in five starts but a win-loss record of just 1-2.
 
On Sunday, he got relief from four pitchers, including Lanesborough’s Rob Buffis, who pitched around two hits in a scoreless seventh inning.
 
Although the stats say the SteepleCats have the third-best defense in the 13-team New England  Collegiate Baseball League, Pederson Sunday was focused on the error that played into Vermont’s two-run sixth.
 
“We had good pitching,” he said. “We couldn’t play catch. We threw the ball from the outfield, and it gets by him, and that’s how they get the last two runs. If we can get the ball to the cutoff man, now, all of a sudden, you’re looking at a 2-1 ballgame instead of 3-2 the other way.
 
“It’s the little things. … Like I’ve told these guys before: Nobody in this whole league has enough talent to make a lot of mental mistakes and overcome it. … If they want to get to the next level, they’ve got to do the little things.”
 
North Adams is on the road at Keene, N.H., on Monday before coming home to face the Valley Blue Sox on Tuesday at 6:30 in a game to be followed by the city’s July 4 fireworks display.
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