HARTFORD, Conn. – Senior DH Alejandro Soriano (Hartford) had eight hits – including an inside-the-park home run – to highlight a 28-hit Eastern Connecticut State University baseball attack as the Warriors extended their winning streak to 13 with a Little East Conference sweep of Plymouth State University Saturday afternoon at Dunkin' Park, home of the Class AA Hartford Yard Goats.
In the first game, junior righties Matthew Wootton (Milford) and Mike Furgalack (Southington) combined on a four-hitter and Eastern (14-5, 4-0 LEC) amassed ten singles among their 11 hits off two Plymouth (2-8, 0-2 LEC) pitchers in a 7-2 victory.
In the second game, Eastern unloaded 17 hits – its sixth straight game of at least ten and 11th this season – and junior All-America lefty Dan Driscoll (Waterford) fanned a career-high 13 batters in 6 1/3 innings in a 13-1 win stopped after seven innings due to the ten-run rule.
Soriano, who went to high school six minutes from Dunkin' Park, was 4-for-5 in each game. Batting third in the order, the left-hitting Soriano legged out an infield double and later scored in a three-run fourth inning that erased Plymouth's early 1-0 lead in the first game. He also had an opposite-field single in the first, and pulled pitches through the right side of the infield in the fifth and seventh before lining out to center field in the eight.
In the second game, Soriano drove in five runs and scored three. After singling twice and doubling and scoring twice in his first three at-bats, Soriano drove a ball off the center field wall in the seventh and raced all the way around, sliding head first across the plate for his first home run of the season.
In his third start of the season, Driscoll (2-1) was masterful, striking out the side three times, fanning six in a row over three innings at one point to record his tenth career win in his two-year Eastern career. His 13 strikeouts were just three shy of the program record for a seven-inning game. Driscoll did not walk a batter and departed in favor of senior righty Bryan Dinnis (Portland) after throwing his 74th pitch of the game to retire the first batter of the seventh inning.
Now 10-1 in his three-year Eastern career, Wootton (2-0), like Driscoll, gave up only three hits in his seven-inning stint, fanning ten and walking three. Furgalack closed it out by fanning three over the final two innings, allowing a leadoff home run in the ninth to Plymouth No. 3 hitter Luke Sokoloski, a .400 hitter.
Behind Soriano, junior centerfielder Ray Leonzi (Trumbull) had five hits, drove in three runs and scored four on the afternoon, while senior leftfielder Josh Cofrancesco (Southington) had three hits, scored twice and plated two, while first-year transfer infielders Teige Kimbler (Albany, NY) and Lucas Malave (Toms River, NJ) each contributed two hits. In all, 13 players had hits on the day, 11 scored runs and eight drove in runs.
Senior shortstop Zach Donahue (South Windsor) extended his on-base streak to 14 by reaching once in each game. Donahue was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded in the sixth inning of the first game and reached in his final at-bat in the nightcap when his opposite-field drive to left in the seventh was lost in the sun for a single.
Eastern begins a stretch of six straight home games Monday when it hosts SUNY Maritime College (12-4) at 5 p.m. at the Eastern Baseball Stadium. The Privateers were 29-15 last year and won two games in the Skyline Conference tournament. Maritime lost both of its Skyline games to St. Joseph's University (L.I.), a team which Eastern defeated with a ninth-inning run, 5-4, in the second round of last year's NCAA tournament.