AMHERST, OHIO– The Amherst Comets topped the Midview Middies 5-0 on Tuesday night in their sectional final matchup.
It was another banner day for Amherst ace Evan Shawver. He recorded 12 strikeouts and gave up just three hits and three walks in six innings. Shawver’s scoreless streak now stands at 39 innings. For the year, he’s recorded 100 strikeouts, officially breaking the school record (92) that he set last season.
What’s even more impressive is the fact that Shawver put up those numbers on a day he is getting over an illness.
“The thing is he’s been sick all week,” Amherst head coach Matt Rositano said. “He goes out there and puts together that kind of performance in a tournament game, and that’s kind of what you come to expect out of him. He’s done it all year, he’s done it his whole career since he was a freshman in tournament games. He goes out there, he throws strikes and we made plays behind him. No errors, they put the ball in play a little bit and he pitched well.”
The only trouble Shawver ran into was in the fifth inning, when bases were loaded with one out after he gave up two consecutive singles and a walk. He got out of the inning without allowing a run with a strikeout and a groundout.
“Even if he gets himself in trouble, he’s got the stuff where he can get himself right back out of trouble,” Rositano said. “He beared down there, he was a bulldog. I think he got a strikeout and a ground out to first, and he’s out of it.”
It also helped that the Comets got their bats going early. They were up 2-0 after an RBI single from Ryan Glowacki and a sacrifice-fly from Kyle Dalzell. Shawver said those early runs, especially during a playoff game when they are at a premium, helped him settle into the game.
“I mean it’s a lot of fun,” he said. “Beginning of the playoffs, that’s when it’s time to get going and our team came out, got me runs early so I could settle down through a few innings and I just threw strikes and let my defense work.”
The Comets scored two more runs in the second on an RBI single from Jacob Lezon and an RBI groundout from Cameron Karnik. The final run of the game came in the fourth inning on another Lezon RBI single.
Lezon was the Comets’ offensive leader going 3-for-3 from the plate with one run scored and two RBI. Glowacki, Shawver and Kyle Mantin recorded the other three hits for Amherst.
Owen Hawke recorded the loss for Midview on the mound after giving up four earned runs on four hits. The Middies left eight runners stranded and could never string enough hits together against Shawver to contend with his mixture of fastballs and off-speed pitches. It’s a problem they’ve run into over the last few years in the postseason.
“This is the third year in a row we’ve played Amherst in the playoffs and Evan Shawver’s pitched against us each time,” Midview head coach Todd Ratica said. “We basically told our guys because we faced them once already to sit on the fastball and don’t swing at his off-speed. If he’s throwing his off-speed for strikes we’ll just tip our cap to him and just keep going after the fastball. That approach worked for us, unfortunately we just weren’t able to get that one hit to get some runs across.”
The Middies’ season ends at 11-14. Amherst improves to 21-4 and will face Olmsted Falls in the district semifinals on Monday at 3 p.m. at the Lorain Pipe Yard.
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