PLYMOUTH – Nothing has come easy for Plymouth’s Pilgrims so far in the new baseball season and the outcome Thursday was a 7-6 win over Triton it didn’t come without a price.

First of all a five run Plymouth lead in the seventh wasn’t safe as the Trojans made a valiant run with two outs in the seventh, plating four runs with three two out hits, the big blow a Gabe McPherson single that plated Landon Kaufman and Jayden Hargrave and put him at second base with the games tying run.

The good news for Plymouth was Brayden Davidson. The sophomore starting pitcher worked his way out of the jam to take the Pilgrims first win and turned in nothing short of an outstanding performance both at the plate and on the mound.

“We’ve been looking for that seven inning guy, we wanted to show that’s possible and we want those horses on the mound,” said Plymouth Head Coach Ryan Wolfe. “When I went out there (to the mound) for the second time in the seventh I planned on taking him out. His pitch count was up. I didn’t want to take him out. He said I want one more guy.”

 

That one guy was Ben Perkins and Davidson was able to get him to fly out to center field to end the game.

 

“I don’t think he walked anybody tonight, he hit one, that was his only free base runner,” said Wolfe. “When you do that good things will happen.”

Plymouth was also able to bang out nine hits on the night – Justin Drudge had a single and a double, Cody Gamble had a pair of singles, and Martin Dyrcz and Davidson drove home a pair of runs. On the other side the Pilgrim defense made some inoportune mistakes that led to runs.

“When you hit the ball hard good things will happen,” said Wolfe. “We did a lot of things tonight to score runs and that is definitely good to see. Especially since we needed every last run.”

Trojan starter Ben Perkins deserved a better fate as Triton errors led to most of the damage against him as well. Junior Skyler Reichert came on and kept the Plymouth hitters off balance in the final two innings to keep Triton in striking distance.

Kaufman had a pair of hits and runs scored for Triton. McPherson had a pair of hits and three RBI’s on the night.

It’s likely that the Pilgrims will lose the services of shortstop Justin Drudge for the foreseeable future as the junior came up lame after beating out a single in the game’s fourth inning. He had to leave the game and it was uncertain how severe the injury was or how long Drudge will be out.

Plymouth (1-2) will be on the road at South Bend Washington tonight.

Linescore

Triton 1 0 1 0 0 0 4 6-7-3

Plymouth 1 3 0 2 0 1 x 7-8-3

WP – Davidson (1-0). LP – Perkins. 2B – Creighbaum (T), Hargrave (T), Drudge (P).