Lewiston’s Hunter Landry isn’t one of those pitchers flirting with a no-hitter who demands complete silence in the dugout or strict adherence to no-no superstitions.
“I’m not one of those guys that puts it aside,” he said. “It’s always fun to think about it a little bit.”
Landry, a junior lefthander, no-hit Brunswick in the Blue Devils’ 5-0 victory on Wednesday at Bates College’s Leahey Field.
The win was Lewiston’s eighth in a row after starting the season 0-3. Brunswick came into the game with a 3-9 record, but Landry wasn’t taking anything for granted.
“I just came out with the same mindset as every game,” Landry said. “Brunswick had us pretty close the first time (a 3-2 Lewiston win on May 8 in Brunswick), so I just knew I had to come out there and throw strikes and we had to get the bats going on the other side.”
With three hits and an RBI, Landry more than did his share to get the bats going. But he didn’t find his rhythm on the mound until about the fourth inning.
“After we got through the lineup once, my fastball started to get under control a little bit more and I could start getting the corners more,” he said. “The past game-and-a-half or so I couldn’t really hit my spots as much as I wanted to, so that really helped. Then mixing the curve ball in up in the count and throwing it for strikes always helps, too.”
He said there were a couple of hard hit balls “but fielders just made the plays. They generally went right to somebody, which was really good.”
The Blue Devils played errorless defense behind Landry. Only one hit batter prevented him from making it a perfect game. He struck out four and didn’t issue a walk.
Lewiston hasn’t lost since falling to rival Edward Little, 11-4, on April 23. Landry and Evan Cox lead a pitching staff that has tossed four shutouts during the eight-game winning streak. The offense has also been running on all cylinders, averaging a little over seven runs per game after scoring just three per game during the losing streak.
Landry said there was no panic in the Blue Devils during the slow start.
“For the past two seasons, we’ve dropped the first three in a row and then started winning games, so we weren’t too worried. We’ve been there before,” he said. “We started showing up wanting to win a little more and coming to work with a little more urgency. Then with winning comes enjoying it more. I think early on we were a little stressed out because we were in the gym so long (due to inclement weather).”
The final third of the season will test the Devils’ mettle, starting on Friday’s game at Hampden Academy, which is also 8-3. They wrap up the regular season with a home game against Oxford Hills and a road tilt at Edward Little.
Saints back in business
St. Dom’s continues to climb the Class C South Heal point standings, closing out a tough stretch of six games in seven days with a 2-0 win over Maranacook on Thursday to improve to 8-4.
“”We’re back in business,” coach Bob Blackman said. “We’ve played 12 games and half of those in the last seven days. We were fortunate that two of the games were against (1-8) Waynflete, which allowed me to get some guys who didn’t have a whole lot of innings a chance to pitch, and they did pretty well.”
Pitching has been a key to the Saints success with Mac Pelletier, their lone senior, and junior Riley Volpe leading the way. Both are 3-1 on the season, with Pelletier picking up his third win on Thursday with a five-hit complete game shutout.
“Pelletier stepped up and threw strikes and we made all of the plays behind him,” Blackman said.
The Saints will be a lot less busy with four games over the next two weeks, but there are still some big ones still left. They face another top team in Class C South, Traip Academy, then host Class B power Cape Elizabeth and unbeaten Richmond from Class D.
Come to Heal
Teams are entering the final two weeks of the season searching for more consistency and, in some cases, scrambling for more Heal points.
Monmouth coach Eric Palleschi thought his team had found the former when it entered this week with a four-game winning streak. But he was also hoping the Mustangs would take advantage of their shrinking opportunities to collect Heal points with games against Lisbon and Mountain Valley.
The Mustangs lost both games, 7-0 to the Greyhounds on Monday and 12-5 to the Falcons on Wednesday, to drop to 6-4.
“Now we’ve got to get back on track,” he said. “This seems to be our thing — lose two, win four in a row, now back into a two-game losing streak. We’ve just got to get back to playing baseball.”
The Mustangs’ schedule isn’t doing them any favors as far as available Heal points are concerned. Their home-and-home opponents are Boothbay (2-9), Dirigo (4-7) and Wiscasset (0-10), with whom they have one remaining game each. The other two remaining games are against teams who are also currently on the outside looking in for playoff spots — Oak Hill and Telstar.
Monmouth should have little trouble reaching the postseason, but unless one of those teams or some of the other teams that it has already beaten get hot down the stretch, moving up from the No. 5 spot in the C South standings will be difficult even if they win out.
Mountain Valley coach Steve LaPointe and Lisbon coach Randy Ridley were touting their teams’ wins over Monmouth for the same reasons.
Though they finished the first half of the season 5-3, the Falcons’ wins weren’t translating to the Heals.
“We needed to win that game. We haven’t really beaten anyone with a winning record, so this is big,” said LaPointe, whose team improved to 6-3.
Ranked eighth in the B South Heals, the Falcons have more opportunities to move up in their region than the Mustangs do in C South. Remaining opponents include Mt. Abram, Spruce Mountain, Winthrop and Carrabec/Madison (Bridgeway).
LaPointe was happy to see his team quickly shake off Monday’s 13-3 loss to Hall-Dale, the only unbeaten team in the MVC.
“These kids are resilient. You wouldn’t have known these kids lost to Hall-Dale. We came out (Tuesday) and played in the mud and had a great time,” he said.
Defending C South champion is 9-1 but found itself looking up at Hall-Dale, Maranacook and Traip Academy in the Heals entering Thursday.
“I’ve got Hall-Dale again. I’ve still got Winthrop twice, so there are plenty of points left for us,” Ridley said after the Greyhounds beat Monmouth. “This was a big start because this was the meat of our schedule. We are facing all of those (MVC) teams that are right near us, that are good solid teams, and we need to come out like we did (Monday) and hit the ball hard, play good defense and throw strikes.”
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