'That really brings a team together': Scituate baseball's fast start fueled by wild wins

SCITUATE – If you're into high drama, the Scituate High baseball team might be for you.

Not so much on this particular day, but in general.

A year removed from an 8-12, playoff-less 2023 campaign, the Sailors have gotten back to winning this spring, often in wild fashion. Six games in, they've already authored two walk-off victories (against Cohasset and Hingham) and also rallied late to edge Plymouth South by a run.

As you might expect, all that excitement is great for team bonding.

"Having something like that (happen) and bringing the energy up that high, there's nothing that gets a team going more than that," senior shortstop Ayden Lisi remarked. "That really brings a team together."

"I think if we didn't walk those off," sophomore pitcher Mikey Kostek noted, "we wouldn't be as close as we are now because we've battled through it."

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Scituate (5-1) didn't need any late heroics on Friday in a 7-4 win over Falmouth in the consolation game of the Sailors' own J.L. Murphy Memorial Tournament, although there were some semi-nervous moments. Scituate built a 7-0 lead and then held on as the Clippers (1-5) scored four times in the top of the seventh.

Kostek, who was brilliant and efficient over the first 6 innings (3 hits, just 74 pitches), labored in the final frame, throwing 36 pitches and allowing 3 hits and a pair of walks before inducing a game-ending groundout with the potential tying run at the plate.

"I was barely missing my spots," said Kostek, a 5-foot-9 right-hander who has shared pitching duties with senior Parker Freedman so far. "I felt like I wasn't getting the calls that I wanted, but that's just baseball. Overall, we got through it at the end, which was good."

Asked what he likes from Kostek, Lisi cited "the way he's just pounding the zone. These (Falmouth) guys today, they weren't able to keep up with him. The way he's using his stuff is really working for him."

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As good teams do, the Sailors manufactured a rally in the third to grab a 2-0 lead. Scituate got only one hit – Lisi's check-swing RBI dribbler that landed in a vacant patch of turf to the left of the mound. The other run scored on a wild pitch as the Sailors' formula also included a hit batter, two walks, a fielder's choice and three stolen bases.

Lisi called it a good example of "scrapping together plays, scrapping together runs."

Scituate's bats came alive in the fourth on consecutive RBI singles from No. 9 hitter Brendan Whitman, leadoff guy Jason Bellucci and No. 2 hitter Jacoby Kingsbury for a 5-0 lead. Whitman added another RBI single in the two-run sixth. Scituate had only seven hits total, but the bottom three hitters in the lineup – Kostek, Matt Monahan and Whitman – were on base a combined six times and scored each time. Whitman alone was 2-for-2 with a hit-by-pitch, 2 RBIs and 3 runs.

Scituate's lone loss so far was Thursday's 5-3 setback to Sandwich, which knocked off Hanover, 8-1, in Friday's tournament championship game.

"It's definitely been a fun start," Sailors coach Craig Parkins said. "I don't want to say it's unexpected, but we knew we had kind of a younger team this year. And even some seniors were stepping into spots where they weren't returning starters from last year. We were inexperienced (coming in), but you're going to be happy with a 5-1 start. It's been a good beginning."

Parkins said he asked his players after the Plymouth South game why they thought they were 4-0 at the time. He was pleased that most of the responses talked about having a "good vibe on the team" and how much everyone was getting along.

The coach's response: "I was like, 'Great. Keep that in your heads because if stuff starts to go south – which it will sometimes – that's what you fall back on, how you guys are playing together.'"

This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Edge-of-your-seat wins have fueled Scituate baseball's 5-1 start