Nashua North baseball bounces back with win over Nashua South

NASHUA – The Nashua High School North baseball team had something to prove Wednesday night.

One game after giving up 33 runs to Londonderry, the Titans got a stellar pitching performance from Mike Roberts and churned out the offense in a 10-0 win over Nashua South at Holman Stadium. The game was called after five innings due to the mercy rule.

Roberts pitched all five innings, striking out 11, and faced just one batter over the minimum. South’s lone hit of the game came when Nick Reed bounced a ball high enough off the plate that he was able to beat out an infield single.

The Panthers didn’t hit a ball out of the infield as Roberts located his fastball and kept the ball down. Not bad considering he hadn’t pitched in 10 days and found out he’d be starting 15 minutes before the game after Kyle McCarthy was scratched due to an illness.

“He had had a dead arm so this is the first he’s pitched in a week and a half,” North coach Kyle Harvell said of Roberts. “Our plan coming into the week was to not have him pitch a lot. All that, along with not having anybody behind him, it certainly helped a lot.”

Roberts also drove in two runs while Zach Smith was 2 for 2 with three RBIs, Brendan Robbins was 2 for 3 with two RBIs and Brendan Martin reached base four times and scored each time.

Martin also scored one of the more exciting – and unusual – runs of the game. With two out in the bottom of the second, Martin struck out swinging at a curveball from South starter Joe Gouveia. But catcher Alex Dunn couldn’t hang on and his throw to first base sailed into right field.

Martin made the turn for second, continued on to third and when Matt Dietrich’s throw from right was off the mark, came around to score to put the Titans (7-4) up 4-0.

“We’d been playing clean defense for a while and the last two games, we’ve had meltdowns,” South coach John Roper said. “That’s been the issue. I would think that if you love the game of baseball, your mind in between the lines is focused and that’s what we didn’t have.”

Gouveia pitched well to open the game, but the mistakes by South (4-6) in the field led to four unearned runs. The Panthers starter gave up four earned runs on six hits and four walks with three strikeouts over 3 2/3 innings.

“Gouveia again came out and did what he was supposed to do,” Roper said. “When you mix in a guy like Mike Roberts throwing like he was throwing, he was near flawless. When you make errors and a guy is pitching like that and they’re putting the ball in play, it makes for a long night.”

North returns to the field on Saturday at 4 p.m. at Holman against Alvirne. South is off until Monday, when it heads to Exeter for a 4 p.m. start.