AUGUSTA — Corbin Hyde has been most comfortable pitching from the stretch this year. Whether or not he was willing to admit it before Wednesday’s American Legion state tournament opener, but he certainly couldn’t deny it after.
Hyde struck out 16 while scattering six hits and two walks over eight innings to lead Past Club of Lewiston to a 3-1 win over The Red Barn of Augusta on day one of the double-elimination tournament at Morton Field.
Pastime Club (18-4) will face Zone 1 runner-up Bangor at 2 p.m. Thursday at Morton Field. The Red Barn (17-4) draws Fayette-Staples of Saco in a loser’s bracket game at 10 a.m.
Luke Cote closed it out in the ninth for the save.
The Red Barn stranded 11 runners for the game, 10 against Hyde. Eleven of his Ks came with at least one baserunner on. Twelve batters went down swinging.
None were bigger than the last three he sent down. Trailing 3-1 in the eighth, The Red Barn loaded the bases with nobody out on Zack Lachance’s looping single over a leaping second baseman, a bobbled potential double-play ball by the second baseman and a bunt single by John Suga.
“I thought for sure my Dad (Jim, Pastime’s pitching coach) was going to come out and take me out. I was pumped that he didn’t,” said Hyde, the tournament MVP when Pastime won its last state title in 2011. “I buckled down after that.”
With his pitch count over 130, Hyde struck out Sean Cabanise on a fastball, Cam Brochu on a slider and Raymond Mosca on a high fastball to escape with the two-run lead intact.
“He hits his corners really well with the fastball,” Pastime catcher Alex Small said. “He’s fast enough to shut people down and when he puts on his off-speed, it’s almost unhittable.”
Small helped him with those off-speed pitches by blocking a couple of them in the dirt in the eighth inning and keeping at least one run from scoring.
“Those were huge because I think I was up 0-2 on him and I didn’t want to give them anything good. I wanted to throw them in the dirt,” Hyde said. “As a pitcher, you’ve got to trust your catcher, and I definitely trust Alex.”
Hyde began the game pitching from the wind-up, which he doesn’t normally do. He surrendered a walk in the first and had a batter reach on an error in the second with no further damage. He decided to scrap the motion by his second time through the lineup.
“It wasn’t really working for me, so I went back to the stretch,” he said. “I mainly threw fastballs, but I started locating a little bit better with my curve ball and slider.”
“His velocity was pretty consistent, I thought, from early in the game to when he came out of the game,” Pastime coach Dave Jordan said. “I felt like his mechanics were true. (In the seventh), when he walked a guy on four pitches and it looked like his mechanics were coming off, we gave him another batter and he was right back on, hitting his spots again.”
The Red Barn stranded runners in scoring position in each of the first three innings and four of the first five. It scored its lone run with a two-out rally in the sixth, helped by a Pastime error to cut the deficit to 2-1. Suga accounted for half of its hits.
“They virtually could have gone out there without fielders for six innings,” The Red Barn coach Don Plourde said. “We’ve just got to do a better job putting the ball in play. It’s that simple.”
Pastime had better luck putting the ball in play against Lachance (8 IP, 7 H, 2 ER, 5 K, 5 BB) but needed a little help to plate two of its three runs.
It broke a scoreless tie in the fourth after Ryan Riordan reached with a one-out single. With two out, Small hit a chopper to third that should have ended the inning, but the third baseman’s throw pulled the first baseman off the bag and a hustling Riordan was able to go all the way from first to third on the play. Lachance’s pickoff throw to first base got away and Riordan was able to trot home.
Lachance’s two-out wild pitch allowed Cote to make it 2-0 in the fifth. After The Red Barn cut that lead in half, Pastime added an insurance run in the seventh when Hyde doubled with two out, moved to third on a wild pitch and scored on Brian Wigant’s opposite-field single.
rwhitehouse@sunjournal.com
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