AUBURN, Maine — With the baseball season entering its final week, Edward Little hoped to secure a signature win to propel it into the playoffs when three-time defending state champion Bangor came to Austin Field on Tuesday.
Left-hander Damien St. Pierre delivered with a three-hit shutout of the top-ranked Rams for a 3-0 Edward Little victory.
St. Pierre struck out 11 and didn’t walk a single batter in an impressive 101-pitch, complete-game victory that handed Bangor its second loss of the season while improving the Red Eddies’ record to 11-3.
“I knew I had to mix it up against a good hitting team, so we did that,” St. Pierre said. “It seemed to work pretty well. “Usually I don’t go with straight fastballs and usually I’m not a big strikeout guy.”
“Our team knows that we haven’t played our best ball all the way through the season yet,” EL coach Dave Jordan said. “I think we’re peaking at the right time. We’re definitely showing better defense, hitting and pitching all the way around. I’m looking forward to keep progressing as we climb towards the playoffs.”
Like St. Pierre, Bangor pitcher Peter Kemble allowed just three hits, but each was crucial to EL’s three runs.
The first was an RBI triple by Jarod Norcross Plourde in the first inning. The second hit, a single by Garrett Hartley, helped the Eddies steal another run in the third. Hartley later belted a solo home run in the sixth.
Hartley’s home run was the only earned run Kemble allowed. He fanned five and walked one.
“We had plenty of opportunities to get some runs and just didn’t,” Bangor coach David Morris said. “Their kid pitched a great game. He threw that curveball for a strike and kept us off-balance, especially in those critical times where we had some guys in scoring position.”
Bangor (11-2) left four runners on base, all in scoring position.
St. Pierre relied mostly on his fastball to strike out the side in the first. Nick Cowperthwaite led off the second with Bangor’s first hit, but was quickly doubled up when left fielder Tyler Libby caught a routine, shallow fly ball and threw a strike to first base.
In the third, the Rams stranded a runner, who had reached on an error, at third. Two innings later, they put runners at second and third with one out via an error and their second hit. But St. Pierre, mixing in his off-speed pitches more as the game unfolded, struck out the next two batters to escape.
“I thought he pitched with confidence, and the guys played with confidence,” Jordan said. “Bangor is a great program. They’re the standard that you want to have your program at. I thought our guys rose to the challenge today and played our game.”
An error by Kemble set up EL’s first run, which Norcross Plourde drove in with a deep fly ball to right-center that the retreating center fielder couldn’t track down as he and the ball reached the fence at the same time.
Austin Brown reached on an error to start the Eddies’ third. Tyler Blanchard sacrificed him to second. Hartley’s single put runners at first and third.
After Kemble got Norcross Plourde to pop out to first for the second out, Hartley intentionally got into a rundown between first and second and stayed in it long enough for Brown to score from third before being tagged out.
The Rams’ final threat came in the sixth, when Kemble led off with a single and Tyler Parke reached on an error. Following a strikeout and a fielder’s choice that erased Parke at second and sent Kemble to third, catcher Maxx Bell threw out Cowperthwaite trying to steal second to end the inning.
“(Beating Bangor) is huge,” St. Pierre said. “We’ve had, not an off season, but it’s been a little shaky at times. But we’ve always picked it back up and gotten going.”