Homer baseball falls to Westhill at home

Coach Robert Nasiatka makes mound visit to try and recompose the team after giving up some runs (Ross Cohen/Cortland Voice)

The Homer Trojans fell by a score of 1-10 to the Westhill Warriors Monday night at Cortland Senior High School and are now 1-4 in their conference.

The game started with Homer’s Mike Strangeway at pitcher for the first four innings.

The Warriors started things off quickly by scoring twice in the first inning until Strangeway had his first strikeout of the game.

Strangeway threw a total of three strikeouts during the four innings he pitched.

The Trojans had trouble offensively at both trying to steal bases and at the plate, as they were barely able to get past second base. There were only a few moments where Homer was either able to or had a chance of getting to third base.

The Trojans also struggled defensively, with most of Westhill’s runs and stolen bases coming from unforced errors from Homer, such as dropped balls and overthrown or underthrown balls.

“Westhill is a very good team,” said Homer head coach Robert Nasiatka. “You can’t give them two or three extra outs an inning because they will hit the ball and score the runs. They are aggressive on the base, they hit well and they field well. So once you get in that hole, you need to find a way to get out of it and we couldn't find a way to get out of it.

“At the end of the year, we will be in the playoffs and we will make some noise there. But right now, we have to figure some things out. Today was not a good day.”

By the end of the last inning, the Trojans started to pick things up, but it was too late.Jed Brazo kicked off the final inning  by getting a walk, followed by a single from allowing Brazo to advance to third base. Finally, Aaron Newcomb recorded an RBI after Brazo scored from his single.

“We started hitting the ball later on in the game and started making things happen,” said Coach Nasiatka. “Overall that is a deep hole to try to get out of. Positives that we can take from this game is how Richard Lambrecht came up from JV and did a great job for the last three innings behind the plate, as he also hit a nice single down the line. Then Aaron had the RBI at the end. These guys will fight and they will push and they will do the things they need to do.”