Winning pitcher Jaren Winger stranded the potential tying run on third base by inducing a ground ball for the final out of the game, helping Presque Isle to a crucial 4-3 high school baseball victory Thursday.
The Wildcats improve their record to 4-7, while the Vikings fell to 3-6. Both teams are in a battle for one of the final playoff positions in Class B North, and that fact wasn’t lost on Presque Isle senior catcher Kyle Rider.
“We needed this win,” said Rider, whose team has just five games remaining and is idle for another 12 days before resuming its schedule against Houlton May 24. “We went in thinking we had to have this, to have a chance to make the playoffs.”
It wasn’t easy, but the Wildcats did it and were able to manufacture all their runs with two outs. The game-winner came after senior cleanup hitter Nick Bartlett reached on Caribou’s fourth infield error of the game to lead off the eighth. He stole second and one out later, advanced to third on R.J. Gross’s line-drive single to left field. After a strikeout for the second out of the inning, Bartlett came across on a passed ball.
In the bottom of the inning, the Vikings’ Mason Huck drew a one-out walk and reached third after consecutive wild pitches by Winger. With two away, Caribou designated hitter Carter Moir then grounded a 2-2 pitch right at Gross at second base to end the game.
Presque Isle had taken a 2-0 lead in the top of the fourth. For the first run in the top of the first, Kyle Rider lined a ball to left-center field that Huck couldn’t quite reach, driving home Sam Gray, who started a two-out rally with the first of his three singles.
Also with two outs and nobody on base in the fourth, junior outfielder Jake Kinney doubled down the left-field line and scored on an infield pop-up off the bat of Winger, which was dropped.
Caribou rallied to tie the game in the bottom of the inning. After Presque Isle starter Caleb Nadeau had retired the first nine batters he faced, Viking senior shortstop Michael Hunter led off the inning with a hard single into center field. He advanced on an errant pickoff attempt by Nadeau, and after a walk by Noah Frost, scored all the way from second on a wild pitch. Frost had advanced to third on the play and then scored when nobody was covering the plate.
Rider had another two-out RBI in the fifth to plate Gray, allowing Presque Isle to retake the lead, but Caribou answered in the sixth off Winger after Frost singled with one out, stole second and scored on a Justin Ouellette pop-fly single that landed in the dirt behind first base.
Winger left two runners on base that inning and two more in the seventh before bearing down again in the eighth.
“He kept his head straight and made some big pitches,” Rider said.
Gunnar Bondeson was the hard-luck loser for Caribou, going five innings in relief of starter Tyler Dombroski and giving up just four hits and one earned run while striking out seven.
Hunter acknowledged that it was a game his team may have let slip away as the Vikes committed the four errors and managed only three hits in the contest.
“It really came down to errors and being unable to close out innings,” he said, “and we just didn’t have it today with the bats — we just couldn’t get anything through the infield and when we did it was hit right at them.”
