Luke Lagos leads Amesbury past Rockport 10-7 in CAL baseball

(Amesbury MA) A losing streak had to end.

Today Amesbury’s two-game slide ended as they defeated Rockport, 10-7, on a sunny Saturday of Cape Ann League baseball.

The Indians’ Luke Lagos led the way for Amesbury with solid pitching and timely hitting.  The AHS senior lefty recorded eight strikeouts in six innings of work while at the bat Luke had two hits, including a bases-clearing double.  He drove across five teammates.

Amesbury coach Joel Brierley was pleased with the result: “It’s nice to win a home game but we have a lot of work to do especially defensively.”

Neither team was solid in the field with each squad erring three times.  “We made some costly errors,” said Rockport coach John Parisi afterwards. “It was two young teams trying to get better.”

Amesbury had a tenuous 5-3 lead going into the bottom of the fifth inning before gaining separation with a five-spot. The resulting 10-3 lead was too much for the Vikings (1-10) to overcome, although they did rally for two in the 6^th off Luke Lagos and got two more in the seventh inning off AHS reliever Thomas Flanagan.

The breakaway fifth saw AHS get runs on wild pitches (Sean Reardon) and Luke Lagos’s double to the fence in right that drove three Indians across.

“I was tired by then,” said Luke afterwards about his double, “and hoping it would clear the fence.  But it did clear the bases. I had been 0-for-7 coming into today’s game so it was nice to start hitting again.”

Despite the 4-game losing streak Coach Parisi saw some good things in today’s game: “This was pitcher Charlie MacDowell’s first start and I thought he did pretty well.”

The big stat collector for Rockport was senior Noah Rawson.  The Vikings’ catcher had three of his team’s eight hits and scored three runs.

For Amesbury (3-6), Logan Burrill was on base three times and drove in two runs.

Both Tucker Molin and Graham Gannett had two hits, and each scored twice.

“Our pattern has been to play well for five or six innings and then have a bad inning,” explained Coach Brierley.  “Just consistently making the routine plays will help us.”

Luke Lagos struck out the side in fifth with a nice mix of fastballs and sliders.  “I had a good slider at times.  Just need to be more consistent with it.”

Luke ended the Rockport 6^th catching Cal Twombly off the base and seeing Cal erased in a rundown.

Nice weather. All the rain we’ve had, now mixed with sunshine, will cause the grass to grow in a hurry.  A couple of times the ball rolled toward the backstop and disappeared from sight!

In the last twelve meetings between the two teams, the Indians hold a 7-5 edge.  The two teams will meet again this Thursday in Rockport.

The Vikings had been averaging 3 runs a game and giving up 10 runs per game.  “When you score seven runs in a high school game like we did today, you should win,” said Coach Parisi.

The Vikings were 14-9 last season and reached the Division 4 North finals.

The Vikings will not be able to use the Sullivan Rule to get into the postseason because Ipswich and Hamilton-Wenham have moved to Division 4.

(All of the pictures above and below should enlarge considerably if you click on them.)