WESTFIELD, Mass. – Westfield State sophomore outfielder Jared Ferrari (Waltham, Mass.) had three hits including an RBI double as Westfield State broke open a close game, then held on late to beat Williams College, 7-5 in a non-conference baseball matinee at Bud and Jim Hagan Field on Sunday.
With the game tied 2-2 in the third inning, the owls struck for three runs as Anthony Crowley was hot by a pitch to lead off the inning, went to second on a ground out and third on a wild pitch, then scored on an RBI groundout from Dan Rokitowski (Ketcham/Wappingers Falls, NY) to give Westfield a 3-2 lead. John Lippincott (Northwestern Regional/Barkhamsted, Conn.) followed with a base hit, and scored on Alex Lafayette's (Ludlow, Mass.) RBI double. Ferrari followed with a RBI base hit to score Lafayette on a diving play at home plate that gave Westfield a 5-2 lead.
Williams answered with two scrappy runs in the top pf the fourth as Jason Parese (Taft/Williamstown, Mass.) and Doug Schaffer (Coate/New Haven, Conn.) walked to lead off the inning. Parese stole second and later came around to score on a passed ball, and Jack Cloud's (New Trier/Willamette, Ill.) base hit scored Shaffer to cut the lead to 5-4.
Ferrari gave the Owls some breathing room in the bottom of the fifth, as his RBI double scored Rokitowski, who had led off the inning with a double of his own. Lafayette added another insurance run as he scored on Alex Benevides (Durfee/Fall River, Mass.) sacrifice fly for a 7-4 Westfield lead.
Owls starter John Gegetskas (Med and Sport Sciences/Windsor, Conn.) labored through four innings, but the Owls got solid relief performances from Mike Hersey (Norton, Mass.) , Liam Neri (The Morgan School/Clinton, Conn.), Scott Strachan (Braintree, Mass.) and Tyler Tongue (Minnechaug/Hampden, Mass.) , who each worked scoreless frames. Neri earned the win with a 1-2-3 sixth inning. Jamie Butler (Sacred Heart/Waterbury, Conn.) worked out of a jam in the ninth inning, allowing a single run on two hit batsmen, a walk, and a sacrifice fly from Adam Regensburg (Hotchkiss/Pottstown, Pa.), but an apparent blown squeeze play yielded the second out of the inning and Butler fanned the final hitter to earn his second save.
Lafayette and Casey Boudreau (Shrewsbury, Mass.) each had a pair of hits for the Owls, 28-6 and ranked seventh in New England.
Williams is 17-11 overall. Starter Tyler Duff (2-2) (Parkland/Orefield, Pa.) worked three innings in taking the loss. Second baseman Jack Roberts (Vineyard Haven, Mass.) finished 3-3 with two rbi for the Ephs.
Westfield State will play its final regular season game, a non-conference tilt at Nichols College on Tuesday, before hosting the MASCAC Tournament on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.