Harwich Sweeps Yarmouth-Dennis To Reach Cape League Championship Series

HARWICH – A year ago, Yarmouth-Dennis resoundingly ended Harwich’s season by slamming the door shut at Whitehouse Field in Game 3 of the East Division final, only hours after the Mariners had clawed out a desperate, epic extra innings victory to stay alive in the series.

The Red Sox and Mariners met once again this year (for the third consecutive summer, actually) in that same round of the Cape Cod Baseball League postseason. This time, Harwich made quick — yet tense still — work of Yarmouth-Dennis, sweeping the series against the league’s best regular season team to advance to the championship.

“This is what you look forward to all year,” said Harwich outfielder Niko Brini (Wofford/transfer to Vanderbilt), who played 32 games plus the postseason for the Mariners last season. “You play school ball for a championship. You come down to summer ball for a championship, and to do it to the same guys that knocked me out last year, I can't wait to do it with this group and win a championship.”

For whatever reason and regardless of the result, things never seem to come completely easy for the Mariners against the Red Sox. To start the series, Harwich first had to survive at Red Wilson Field in Game 1 on Friday, which they did in a 12-9 win. 

The home of the Red Sox — with its bandbox dimensions and lack of lights — can play like a loopy baseball fun house. The ball flies at Red Wilson Field. The sun feels stronger and brighter. Then it sets and the shaded atmosphere turns purple and it’s hard to see just as the game is entering the crucial innings.  

 This is essentially what happened in Game 1. A sequence filled with walks, hits, an error, a hit batter and a balk put Harwich in a 3-0 hole after two. It could have spiraled worse.

Then began the Harwich Mariners power hour. Six players — Brini, Sean O’Leary (UMass Lowell), JP Peltier (Wright State/transfer to Kentucky), Brayden Jaksa (Oregon), Colin Larson (Boston College) and Cade Kurland (Florida/transfer to Louisiana State) homered to put the Mariners up 12-4.

“It was never a doubt that we were going to be able to come back and swing it,” O’Leary said. “So being down, it doesn't really change too much about our approach and our mindsets up there.”

Yarmouth-Dennis charged a scare into Harwich with a five-run rally in the bottom of the ninth. The Red Sox had the tying run at-bat as the sunlight waned. But Owen Wheeler (Maine) entered to get the one-out save, the Mariners taking Game 1 in a tidy three hours, 35 minutes.

“Definitely got a little dicey at the end, but our confidence was we had it all the way,” O’Leary said. “And really unbelievable showing from our offense today.”

Harwich assembled another comeback to take Game 2 and the series. At Whitehouse Field the next evening, the Red Sox once again generated an early advantage, leading 4-0 in the fourth inning until the Mariners scratched across a pair of runs to make it a 5-2 ballgame in the fifth.

Then, the Cape League MVP, Harwich shortstop Ty Smolinski (Kansas State) delivered, lifting a critical three-run homer to left field to tie the game. The next inning, Quinton Coats (Cincinnati) hit a pinch-hit RBI double to push the Mariners ahead. Harwich had put together yet another come-from-behind effort this postseason.

“I think we're a really close-knit group of guys, and that just plays into everything,” Brini said. “Baseball is contagious, good or bad.”

Again though, Yarmouth-Dennis roared in the ninth. A few base hits put the score at 7-6, prompting Harwich manager Steve Englert to bring in Reese Oakley (Murray State) with one down and the bases loaded. 

He struck out two to snuff out the scare and send the Mariners to the championship.

“Little nervous there, a little adrenaline, a little everything,” Oakley said. “Just feeling the emotions, but staying locked in is the main focus when [you've] got bases jammed, [a] one-run game to move you to the championship, so I just stayed locked in.”

From the seventh inning onward, Harwich’s bullpen down the left field line became standing room-only, the players living and dying with every pitch. Four relievers combined to hold the Red Sox to two runs across the final five innings.

Oakley said he didn’t think he was going in, and upon being told to get warm, had to rush — but he was ready and amped nonetheless.

“It was all hands on deck, so we didn't really know who was going to get called, but we were all staying ready,” said Bryan Matuschat (Sacred Heart). “We were staying together as a unit. I mean, I think we finished great. The bullpen shut them down.”

Multiple Harwich players were here last postseason too, making the sweep against the Red Sox all the sweeter. Matuschat, for instance, was the starter for Harwich’s lone win last year in the East Division finals — a wild 13-inning 7-6 drama in Game 2 played across two days (after play was suspended due to darkness).

“They sent us home last summer, so, no hard feelings, but ‘See you guys’ — you know what I mean?” Matuschat said.

Another pitcher, Christian Rodriguez (Florida/transfer to Florida International), similarly remembers the long, stressful affair last summer against Yarmouth-Dennis. The repeated nailbiters that have formed this run to the championship, according to Rodriguez, made an already hungry team even hungrier.

“It takes every single one of us,” Rodriguez said. “I mean, the bullpen — the hitters help us. We try and help the hitters, and everybody's got a job to do, and I think we all kind of understand that. And at the end of the day, I think we all want to win. We all want to be here. No one really wants to go home.”