Baseball: Bayonne Follows Close Loss to St. Peter's Prep with 10-2 Defeat at Cranford

CRANFORD, NJ -- Can the results of one baseball game carry over and affect a team's performance in another game the next day?

Bayonne coach Dave Hoffmann thinks they can, and believes that might have had to do with how the youthful Bees came out of the gates so slowly in a 10-2 road loss to Cranford on Tuesday afternoon.

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On Monday, Bayonne lost a tight decision, 3-2, to Hudson County rival St. Peter's Prep, a game which, had the Bees won, could have infused them with immeasurable confidence going forward. But Bayonne ace right-hander Nolan Geisler, after allowing two runs in five innings, racked up a pitch count of 105 and couldn't continue into the sixth.

St. Peter's Prep scored the tiebreaking run in the top of the sixth inning of a game in which Bayonne was held to four hits.

On Tuesday, Cranford jumped on Bayonne for five runs on just two hits in the first inning, then tacked on three more in the second inning, two on a home run to center field by Braden Frey.

"We pitched and defended well against St. Peter's yesterday. We were right there," said Hoffmann, whose team won the Section 2, Group 4 championship last season but had to replace almost all the regulars from that team. "It's a lesson that you can't let one loss become two, and I think that might have been what happened today, the way we started out. Cranford is a team that knows how to win. We're still working through some things."

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Bayonne (4-4) had a few highlights on Tuesday, and they came from the bottom two batters in its order and from its third pitcher of the day.

Freshman designated hitter Luke Eckert hit a solo home run to center for Bayonne in the fifth inning. He also flirted with a second homer on a flyball to the fence in right in the seventh. Russell Ward, who singled in the third inning for Bayonne's first hit, made a spectacular catch in center field in the sixth inning. And junior right-hander Ronan Spiers pitched three solid innings of relief, retiring seven of the last eight batters he faced and issuing no walks.

"Russ Ward is a good player for is who was a reserve on last year's championship team," Hoffmann said. "Luke Ward is a freshman. We are very high on his ability."

Bayonne was almost able to escape a bases-loaded situation in the first inning unscathed. Cranford (6-2) scored all five of its runs after two were out, highlighted by Ryan Carracino's two-run single to left that ended up scoring three runs after the relay throw to the plate ended up out of play. Two more runs came in on a later error.

That was enough for Cranford senior right-hander Joe Paccione, who allowed just two hits in the first five innings before running into command issues in the sixth.

"We just don't have the experience yet at this juncture of the season," said Hoffmann whose team plays an exceptionally demanding schedule (including its annual crossover meeting with Cranford). "We can't die. We are not giving up on this team. Our goal as a program is don't let us get down on ourselves. We are going to turn this around, and I believe we'll be a better team later in the season by the time the tournaments start."

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