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Tournaments  | Story  | 7/9/2018

Day pitches Marshalls into final

Bryan Cooney     
Photo: Cameron Day (Perfect Game)

SANFORD, Fla. – Shutouts had been the theme for the pitching staff of the MountainWest Marshalls heading into Monday’s semifinals of the 15u Super25 National Championship.

Through their five pool play contests, the Marshalls had tossed shutouts in three games and had outscored opponents by a whopping 44-3. Part of the rotation that opened the tournament – as part of a 9-0 victory against the North Florida Gators – was righthander Cameron Day (2021, Layton, Utah). Day worked three scoreless frames and was ready to roll in the playoffs as the Marshalls matched up against Dig In Baseball.



Day was simply superb as he allowed just a fourth-inning single in his 6 2/3 innings of work and racked up 11 strikeouts against one walk, leading his team to a 6-0 victory and a berth in Tuesday’s title game.

From the start, Day was locked in as he struck out two in a clean top half of the first while popping his fastball at 87 mph on the gun. His teammates would bring him run support immediately as four runs came across in the home half of the inning all with two outs as the Marshalls took advantage of two costly errors from Dig In.

The Marshalls added another run in the second and tacked on one more in the fourth after Mason Strong (2021, Santa Clara, Utah) hit a one-out triple and came in to score on a groundout.

Day continued to pound the zone with a fastball/breaking ball combination that didn’t allow Dig In batters to get comfortable as the righthander worked ahead in counts for the entire game.  Day struck out his final two hitters of the game as he hit the daily pitch limit and gave way to Tyler Nelson (2021, Salem, Utah) who would cap off the game with a strikeout to clinch the Marshalls berth in Tuesday’s championship.

In the championship game, a familiar foe awaits the Marshalls in Steelsharks Baseball. The Steelsharks broke out their bats as they have done all tournament-long with an 8-2 victory over the Virginia Breeze in the other semifinal on Monday. These two teams were in the same pool and the Marshalls have been the only team to successfully hold the Steelshark offense in check as they won 2-1 on Sunday to win the pool.

The Steelsharks got off to a similar start as the Marshalls did in the first inning of their semifinal as they also plated four runs with the big hit in the inning coming from the tournament’s leading hitter. Sam Raineri (2021, Bethlehem, Pa.) entered Monday with nine hits in 13 at-bats and added to that total with a two-run single after the Steelsharks took advantage of two errors by the Breeze that netted them their first two runs of the inning.

That gave Steelshark starter Carter Welch (2021, Kutztown, Pa.) a lead to work with and Welch would work into the fifth inning, finishing with 4 1/3 innings and allowing one earned run while striking out four.

The Steelsharks added to their lead in the fourth as they again took advantage of errors and walks before three straight run-scoring singles came off the bats of Jack Rothenhausler (2021, Bethlehem, Pa.), Eric Ludwick (2021, Bethlehem, Pa.) and Welch to put the Steelsharks ahead 8-1.

From there, three pitchers brought it home for the Steelsharks as they closed out the Breeze to get another shot at the Marshalls for all the marbles with the game taking place at 9:15 a.m. at the Boombah Sports Complex.