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Silver Knights suffer tough 6-5 loss vs. Bravehearts

By Tom King - Staff Writer | Jul 6, 2020

Telegraph photo by TOM KING Nashua Silver Knights starter Pat Harrington delivers a pitch during the first inning of Sunday's tough 6-5 loss at the hands of the Worcester Bravehearts at Holman Stadium.

NASHUA – The Holman Stadium short left field brick wall giveth, and it also taketh away.

It gave the Worcester Bravehearts a 6-5 win and took away the Nashua Silver Knights’ chances at their first win of the year Sunday before a sun splashed Holman Stadium crowd of 502.

But it didn’t completely ruin the day. The Knights finally showed some life, battling back from a 5-0 deficit to tie the game at 5 in the bottom of the eighth.

Then in the top of the ninth Worcester’s Andrew Selima smacked a two-out solo shot off Knights reliever Kyle Skidmore that just curled around the left field foul pole over the brick wall’s 307 foot sign.

Ouch. It got even more painful when the Knights left the bases loaded in the bottom of of the ninth. Nashua is now off to an 0-3 start in its abbreviated 39-game season.

“There has to be a wakeup call for these guys,” Silver Knights manager Kyle Jackson said. “I understand it’s summer ball, and we’ve talked. I just don’t want them to get frustrated.

“There’s some things we need to clean up , for me as a coach and as a coaching staff. But I’m not worried. … It was nice to see some excitement in the dugout. Over the past couple of games there hadn’t been much.”

And things looked lifeless for the first six or seven frames of Sunday’s game when Worcester had built up a 5-0 lead thanks in part to two errors by Nashua second baseman Max Viera.

One came in the second to allow two runs to score after Worcester’s Nick Martin had given the visitors a 1-0 lead with an RBI hit off Nashua starter Pat Harrington.

Worcester added solo runs in the fifth (bases loaded hit-by-pitch) and sixth (Danny Torres RBI double) and Nashua had already looked feeble at the plate with nine strikeouts and just two hits.

Enter Worcester reliever Jakob Barker, who helped give the Knights that wakeup call issuing four straight walks in the eighth. Nashua’s Nick Shumski singled in the second run off Barker’s replacement, Brendan Desautels, then Luke Beckstein and Jack Arend hit consecutive RBI groundouts to make it a 5-4 game.

Ben Rounds capped off the rally with an RBI single to tie things at 5, and the fans came alive at Holman. Cowbells galore.

However, in the ninth, Selima reached out and got the bat on a 3-1 Skidmore offering.

“It was a good pitch,” Jackson said. “Lefty on lefty. He got the bat out and found that short porch. … It looked like my golf swing.”

Nashua wasn’t done competing. John Mead smacked a two-out double and a rattled Desautels issued back-to-back walks to Dylan Jones and Shumski to load ’em up. But he calmed down to get Lucas Stalman to fly out to end the game.

“We’re a better team than we have been in the past few games,” Jackson said. “Guys are getting more confident with the bats. I’m not worried.”

“I think the guys are starting to get back into it,” Jones said. “Seeing pitches every day is going to help guys compete at the plate and get their timing back after not competing after a while.”

They competed Sunday, but just didn’t win.

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