By Blake Benard
The Commodores thought they had walked it off.
Trevor Larnach stepped up to the plate in the 11th and drove the baseball deep into the Falmouth sky. The bench rose with the baseball and then watched it miss leaving the yard by about a foot. Larnach (Oregon State) settled for a double.
Turns out the Commodores had to wait just a couple more batters for the dramatic victory as George Janca broke the seemingly eternal tie on a floating walk-off single in the 11th, scoring Larnach from second and giving Falmouth the 3-2 win.
“I know how they were gonna pitch me. They’d been pitching me that way all night,” a water-drenched Janca said following the hit. “I waited and luckily sat back a little bit on a pitch. We had a lot of guys before me that sent it up and put me in that position.”
The victory sustains Falmouth’s lead atop the Western Division with three games to play.
In their second straight game against the Kettleers (19-19-1), Falmouth (21-19-1) used impressive relief from the bullpen to ride the game to extras.
After starter Cole Sands (Florida State) tossed three innings of one run ball, the ‘pen only allowed one run the rest of the way, including retiring 13 Kettleers in a row at one point.
Derrick Adams (Jacksonville State) picked up the victory after working through 3.1 innings of gutsy relief, striking out four. He also made an incredibly heady defensive play in the 11th that sent Falmouth to their home half with energy. With a runner on first and one away, Terrin Vavra (Minnesota) popped his bunt attempt just to the left of the pitchers mound. Instead of catching the easy out, Adams let it fall to the ground and started the every so rare 1-3-3-6-1 double play.
The lefty hustled into the dugout to a mass of Commodores players. The offense ended the game in the next half inning.
Falmouth’s bats broke out early. With a runner on in the first, Josh Breaux smoked his sixth dinger of the summer off the scoreboard in right field to put Falmouth ahead 2-1. Janca (Texas A&M) scored on the long ball.
All of Breaux’s home runs and RBI’s have come in the month of July. The McLennon Community College product also gunned down a Cotuit runner trying to sneak into second on a pass ball.
Outside the dramatic ending, it was a largely quiet night offensively for each team. After Breaux’s homer, the team was retired in order until the start of the eighth frame.
Prior to the walk off hit, neither squad had scored since the fourth inning and it took Falmouth ten innings to pick up that third run. In the process, they stranded runners on third twice.
In between, it was Israel Fuentes (Faulkner University), Zach Leban (Kansas), Ian Koch (Western Illinois) and Adams who worked the stellar relief. The only toll on the bullpen was a Michael Toglia solo bomb in the fourth that tied the game up off Fuentes.
Any momentum will have to wait until Tuesday as the Commodores head into their scheduled off day tomorrow. They return to play against the fourth place Wareham Gatemen at Spillane Field.
The Commodores Corner 