BELCHERTOWN — The Belchertown Post 239 Legion baseball team couldn’t match the success from its first game of the summer, suffering a 13-1 loss to East Springfield Post 420 in six innings in Friday night’s home opener.
Just four days prior to the run-rule loss, the team opened the season with an emphatic, 14-6 win over West Springfield Post 207. Early-season woes caught up to Belchertown in its second time out, flipping the script entirely.
“I was very pleased with how we started the season, and [Friday], I thought we were very tentative, was our problem,” Belchertown head coach Todd McDonald said. ”That’s what we just talked about. We were two different teams. The way we approached game one, we were excited, we were ready to play. [On Friday]… we were on our heels, all game.”
Three different arms saw action for Belchertown in the loss, with Nolan Ingram getting the start and throwing the first 2 2/3 innings of the night before running into some trouble. Oscar Reich came through in relief, taking the next 2 1/3 innings on the mound.
Brodie Funk got the ball for the sixth inning, getting a brief outing due to the run rule ending the contest early. The trio showed flashes throughout the night against a tough lineup, with room to continue to grow as the summer progresses.
“They’re a younger group than I’m used to coaching,” McDonald said. “And they come from a couple of other towns, so I just don’t know them. So I wanted to see them throw tonight and see how they did, and I couldn’t have been happier with what I saw. The score is what it is, but the individual performances give me a lot of optimism for the rest of the season.”
Self-inflicted mistakes plagued Belchertown in the loss, committing four errors in the field defensively. The team struggled to get in a groove, even watching a pop-up land in shallow right field between two defenders in position to make the catch.
With the mistakes in the field, six unearned runs came across on Friday, helping balloon the deficit to the 12-run margin the sixth inning concluded with.
“It’s taking maybe a little bit longer to develop that chemistry than we would in previous seasons, because they haven’t played a lot together,” McDonald said. ”Do I have confidence they’re [going to] bounce back? Of course. They’re baseball players, and we all talk the same language out here.”
The bats struggled to get going for Belchertown as well in the loss, with just three hits as a team through the six innings of play. Ian McDonald led the way by getting on base twice with a single and a walk.
Thatcher Rudnik scored the lone run of the ballgame for Belchertown, reaching home plate on a throwing error from East Springfield in the fifth inning.
With the loss, Belchertown drops to 1-1 on the early season, hoping to iron out the wrinkles in its next game coming up on Monday, June 15, at 5:45 p.m. back at home against Sheffield Post 340.
“I just think the more that we spend time together and play together, then we’re gonna find some consistency,” McDonald said.
