Bishop Guertin's Kyle Young dives to the bag in a steal attempt of second as Nashua South's Devin Sawyer tries to apply the tag duirng Friday night's game at Holman Stadium. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – It’s not often high school baseball games are won in the first inning, but that may have been exactly the case in Bishop Guertin’s 9-0 win over Nashua South at Holman Stadium on Friday night.

Cardinals lefty Sam Franco’s second pitch of the game was rocked to the base of the left field billboards for a double by South’s leadoff hitter Devin Sawyer.

But all Franco did was strike out the next three hitters – as well as the leadoff hitter in the second – and pitched 5.2 strong frames as the Cardinals improved to 10-5, going 5-2 in a stretch of seven games in nine days.

Simply put, Franco wasn’t rattled by Sawyer’s rocket, which ended up being South’s only hit of the game.

“At first I thought it was out, good thing it wasn’t,” Franco said. “I really just focused on getting ahead of the batters after that, working off-speed, just trusting my stuff.

“It’s the beginning of the game, the run would’ve hurt, but there’s always a whole game after that.”

And South wasn’t able to do much offensively, which would have been taking advantage of the five walks Franco issued, the final one with two out in the sixth that had BG coach Scott Painter replace him with reliever A.J. Holmes.

But Painter liked his junior lefty’s composure for sure. Franco had eight strikeouts.

“We’ve talked to him a lot about composure, a couple times about body language,” Painter said. “We’re trying to get him to understand to get back into the rhythm of breathe, throw strikes. He did a good job. He came back in (to the dugout) and said he liked his command and felt good.”

He felt better than the Panthers did after this one, as they fell to 7-6 and need to get on a roll similar to one they had nearly a month ago to have hopes of hosting a first round game. BG is one of eight teams in double figure wins.

“They’re a very good team,” Painter said. “I was expecting a dogfight, they’re very good. But (Franco) kept them off balance a little bit, his changeup was good early. He got them looking for that maybe a little bit then threw the fastball by them and and started to command the count.”

“He gave up one earned run against Londonderry, he’s a really good pitcher,” South coach James Gaj said. “You know something, it became a battle (in the first inning). Devin won, then the rest of the guys struck out. You’ve got to tip your hat to Franco, he pitched well. We have to make something happen offensively.”

Guertin did against Jake O’Connor, who had his moments on the mound, too, but just not enough of them.

BG took a 1-0 lead in the first with Luke Anderson walking and eventually scoring on a wild pitch. They made 2-0 in the third on Jackson Goldstein’s RBI single, and then broke it open with three in the fourth.

After two walks to start the frame, O’Connor was lifted for lefty Nick Shaw, who was the victim of a perfectly placed bunt single by Brandon Rogers to load them up. An infield hit off the bat of Jordan Delude and then a two-run single by Anderson made it a 5-0 game.

“When you bunt, it’s easy to do that,” Gaj said. “You’ve got to find their weakness and they found ours. It’s just where it was.”

Anderson’s hit basically broke it open. Guertin sent nine to the plate in the fifth to plate four more and put things way of reach.

“Senior captain leader, that’s what we’re looking for from him,” Painter said of Anderson. “That’s why he’s in the leadoff spot; we expect him to do things like that.

“It’s a huge win. We go Concord-Goffstown-Portsmouth next week, so it doesn’t get any easier.”

And the Cards will just try to take it one inning at a time.

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