COBLESKILL, N.Y. – The nationally 24th-ranked Cortland baseball team registered 20 hits, including three homers, in an 8-2 non-league win at Cobleskill. The Red Dragons improved to 25-10-1 with the victory.
Cortland will host Fredonia in a three-game SUNYAC series to wrap up the regular season. Due to the weather forecast, the teams will now play a doubleheader on Friday at 1 p.m. and a single game Saturday, tentatively set for 12 p.m., at Wallace Field.
Five players accounted for 17 of Cortland's 20 hits.
Mitchell Kelly (Webster/Webster Thomas) went 4-for-5 with a homer, double, RBI and two runs and
Chris Bonacci (Syracuse/West Genesee) went 4-for-6 with an RBI.
Nolan Smith (Hamburg) and
Dylan Mackenzie (Canandaigua/Canandaigua Academy) each finished 3-for-4 with a homer. Smith drove in two runs and scored twice.
Zachary Kringdon (Larchmont/Mamaroneck) was 3-for-5 iwth a double, RBI and two runs.
Also for the Red Dragons,
Nick Chemotti (Syracuse/West Genesee) finished 2-for-5 with an RBI and
Luke Schartner (Bayport/Bayport-Blue Point) was 1-for-4 with a walk.
Mat Bruno (Rye) had his 19-game hitting streak snapped as he finished 0-for-5 with a sac bunt in six plate appearances.
Nick Jessen (Syracuse/West Genesee) earned the win after allowing three hits and a run with no walks and three strikeouts in four innings. He was the first of a predetermined group of three pitchers for the Red Dragons and therefore qualified for the victory.
Matthew Nochowitz (Glen Head/North Shore) gave up a run on four hits with four strikeouts and no walks in three innings from the fifth through seventh frames.
Ryan Banks (Woodbury/Syosset) retired all six batters he faced, five by strikeout, over the last two innings.
Dylan Pohl went 2-for-3 with a double and Sam Gutierrez was 2-for-4 with a double for the host Fighting Tigers (16-20). Starter Stephen Tejada gave up five runs, three earned, over four and two thirds innings and took the loss.
The teams were scoreless until the fourth when Kelly hit a one-out homer and, four batters later, Bonacci singled in a run to give Cortland a 2-0 lead. Cobleskill answered in the bottom of the inning when Gutierrez doubled with one out and scored on Matthew Snyder's two-out RBI single.
Mackenzie hit a one-out homer in the fifth to provide the first of three runs for the Red Dragons in the fifth. The second run came via back-to-back doubles by Kelly and Kringdon, and the last run scored on an error. Chemotti's RBI single in the sixth pushed the lead to 6-1. Cobleskill scored on a Chris Champlin sac fly in the bottom of the sixth, and Cortland finished the scoring on Smith's two-run homer in the eighth.
