Stoughton's Bats Come Alive in Win Over KP Baseball

A five-run fifth inning propelled the Stoughton High baseball team to an 11-4 win at King Philip Monday afternoon.

King Philip’s hurler, Brian Crofton, seemed to dominate in three of his innings pitched, but the Black Knights owned him in his other two, as Stoughton set a season-high in runs scored. The win was the second of the year for the Black Knights (2-7), snapping a six game losing streak.

“You can’t do well in three innings and not the rest of the game and expect to win,” King Philip Coach Ed Moran said. “This was by far our worse game of the season.”

Crofton pitched 4 and 2/3 innings with 11 strikeouts, sending every Stoughton batter back to the bench with at least one strikeout — that is, except for Pat Jackman.

After breezing through the first inning, Crofton ran into trouble, allowing two singles, a walk, three stolen bases and a passed ball as the Black Knights grabbed an early 2-0 lead they would never relinquish.

“We’ve been in a lot of dog fights this year, usually on the wrong end,” Stoughton Coach Mike Armour said. “It was nice to finally put together a winning effort.”

Stoughton improved its lead to 7-0 by scoring another five runs in the fifth inning. The Black Knights sent 10 batters to the plate, coming away with four hits, two walks, a hit batsman and three stolen bases to chase Crofton. KP’s Nate Leonard took over and did something Crofton was not able to do—get Jackman to strikeout to end the inning.

“As a pitching staff, when we’ve been ahead in the count we’ve been successful. Brian was working behind almost all afternoon,” the KP coach said. “He didn’t have enough on his off-speed pitch and was forced to go with the fastball, and the Stoughton hitters began teeing off on it.”

While the Black Knight batters were rounding the bases against Crofton in the second and fifth innings, Stoughton’s Brain Kaplan was holding the Warriors batters at bay. Kaplan wasn’t doing anything flashy, but instead let his defense do the work behind him, holding KP scoreless through four innings. The Stoughton hurler got into trouble in the second, but left the bases full of Warriors runners.

KP was finally able to get to Kaplan with four runs in the fifth inning on two hits, but just as fast as the Warriors had climbed back into the game, they gave it away the very next inning, accounting for the final score.

In the win, Stoughton was led by Alex Fernandes (2-4 with 3 RBI and 2 runs scored), Frankie Morris (2-4 with an RBI and 2 runs scored), Andrew Cull (2-3 with 3 RBI) and Mike Gallagher (3-4 with an RBI and 2 runs scored). Jackman came in to relieve Kaplan and finished with 2 and 2/3 scoreless innings.

The 11 runs scored equals the number of combined runs Stoughton scored during their six-game losing skid.

Stoughton next hosts Attleboro Wednesday at 3:30 p.m.