H.S. Baseball: Edward Little rallies past Lewiston

Edward Little’s Tyler Libby dives back to first base as Lewiston’s Ben Chase waits for the pickoff attempt to arrive during Tuesday’s game in Auburn.

AUBURN — Evan Cox ran out of time pitching for Lewiston.

With him out, it was Edward Little’s time.

Cox was taken out with two outs in the bottom of the sixth and the Blue Devils holding a 2-1 lead. The Red Eddies followed with three hits and two walks against Lewiston relievers to rally for a 5-2 lead.

Lewiston’s own rally ran out of gas, and Edward Little held on for a 5-3 victory in a Class A North baseball game at Austin Field on Tuesday.

Cox walked seven batters and gave up hits to five more, but all of those yielded only two runs. It was a four-pitch walk drawn by Ian Brushwein in the sixth that hurt the most.

“Evan Cox pitched an amazing game, and we had to take him in the sixth inning because of the pitch-count rule,” Lewiston coach Will Emerson said. “Two outs in the sixth and I got to go get my guy because of the rule. That’s tough when you got to make a change based on something like that when a kid is pitching just so beautifully.”

Red Eddies (13-3) leadoff hitter Austin Brown then greeted Blue Devils (9-7) reliever Jack LeBlond with a single that dropped into shallow right field. Tyler Blanchard then walked on four pitches to load the bases for Grant Hartley.

That was it for LeBlond, who gave way to Hunter Landry on the mound.

“Jack’s been our closer. He’s been our guy that comes in and gets saves for us,” Emerson said. “And he did his job. He got a weak fly ball and they lost it in the lights, and it was a bloop hit, and welcome to baseball.”

Hartley wasted no time against Landry, blasting the first pitch he saw to deep center for a go-ahead, two-run double.

“We challenge our guys to step up and to be the next person to make a play, and not wait for their teammates to be the one to do that,” EL coach Dave Jordan said. “And I thought the guys they threw in are very quality arms. LeBlond and Landry are very good, young pitchers. Fortunately we were able to get some guys on, and then Grant Hartley’s been a guy that’s been making solid contact for us all year. He was able to get a pitch he could handle. I thought they had done a great job on him all game.”

Jarod Norcross Plourde was intentionally walked so Landry could instead pitch to Maxx Bell, who struck out in his previous three at-bats, but Bell got the last laugh by dropping a two-run single inside the first-base line between three Lewiston fielders.

The Blue Devils faced Damien St. Pierre on the mound for the seventh after Norcross Plourde pitched the first six. Nate Osgood led off with a walk and stole both second and third. St. Pierre struck out Gordon Beckwith on a 3-2 pitch, but pinch hitter Elias Atkins was able to drive in pinch runner Cooper Millett with an RBI groundout. Cox reached on an error, but St. Pierre then ended the game by striking out LeBlond.

Lewiston bookended the game with scoring innings. The Blue Devils scored two in the first after jumping on Norcross Plourde.

Cox struck out on three pitches to start the game, but LeBlond then walked on four pitches. Landry singled, then Eddie Turgeon reached on an error, scoring LeBlond. Another error on Turgeon’s steal of second drove home Landry before Norcross Plourde settled in.

“That was absolutely huge, to go out and put runs off a guy like that,” Emerson said. “The tough part of that is when you do take a lead early, you kind of get a little flat. I think you saw that a little bit. We were a little flat until the seventh inning came, and there was that urgency to get runs and bring the energy back up.”

“I think when you have a rivalry game, the first inning is one of those innings that people are all excited, and sometimes maybe you’re trying to put a little too much on the ball, or trying to be spot-on, or things like that. I thought they made the best of opportunities by getting some guys and moving them around,” Jordan said. “What was nice is that the first game we played them, we gave them multiple opportunities from that. (Today) we shut it down and only gave up the two runs, which was big. I’m very proud of my guys that they were able to stop the bleeding early and battle through that.”

Norcross Plourde worked around two singles and two walks for the rest of his outing, all while striking out nine batters.

“I think Jarod just started hitting his spots,” Jordan said. “I think that he just got to a spot where he started throwing strikes.”

The Red Eddies got one run back in the bottom of the first. Brown led off by drawing a walk and moved to second on a wild pitch. A fly out by Blanchard to right was able to move Brown to third, and after Hartley walked, Norcross Plourde drove in Brown with another fly out to right.

Edward Little kept trying to get that second run, but was unable to take advantage of having two runners on in each of the next four innings.

“We had some guys in scoring position a number of different times throughout the game, and I thought Evan Cox made some great pitches, and they played some very good defense behind him,” Jordan said. “The right side of their defense made some really nice plays, I thought robbed us of some opportunities.

“They’re just a gritty, tough team. It was a real fun game.”

wkramlich@sunjournal.com