Nick Carbone hopes Wednesday’s dramatic 5-4 victory over Beacon is a playoff preview. Not necessarily the matchup, but the performance.
George Washington, ranked second in the city by The Post, dug out quality at bats, received clutch hits and lockdown relief – all factors that enabled the Trojans to rally from a three-run deficit entering the bottom of the fifth.
“This is what a playoff game is gonna feel like and the more we can be exposed to it, the better we’ll fare,” the interim coach said.
The ending was anticlimactic as Beacon reliever Kai Glick – the staff ace still working his way back from offseason arm surgery – walked Erick Roman on four pitches to force in the game-winning run. Glick intentionally walked slugger Nelson Rodriguez to get to Roman, but the senior never took the bat off his shoulders.
“I never got a walk-off like that,” Roman said. “I was just gonna wait for my pitch to see what was going to happen, to see if he was going to throw me a fastball. As long as we win, I’m comfortable with that.”
Everything else about the victory was dramatic. Senior Kevin Torres picked up the win with two shutdown innings of relief and left fielder Alexis Torres, an All Hallows transfer with thunder in his bat, belted a two-run triple off Beacon starter Orlando Adorno in which he came around to score the game-tying run on a Beacon misplay in the fifth.
“We didn’t have our best game today — I think mentally more so than physically — but we hung in there,” Carbone said.
He was referring to all the lost opportunities, namely the home second when the Trojans loaded the bases with nobody out, only to come up empty. Randy Rodriguez and Jorge Toribio grounded out and Nelson Rodriguez struck out.
Beacon built a 4-1 lead as Samuel Fox drove in a first-inning run with a single, Dylan Long plated two more with a single to center in the third and Garrison Polius drove in the last run with a run-scoring double.
In the fifth, Torres came through, ripping a 2-2 fastball into the deepest part of the field, way back in left center 380 feet away. It was just out of the reach of left fielder Giovanni Dingcong and scored Roman and Osvaldo Pichardo. Torres initially stopped at third, but came around to score when Fox, the Beacon shortstop, couldn’t handle the relay throw.
“I felt like a real Trojan today,” he said.
Torres has begun to find himself after a slow start adjusting to PSAL pitching and his new teammates. He thrived in last week’s George Washington Holiday Tournament and had arguably the biggest hit of the Trojans (7-0, Manhattan A East) season on Wednesday.
“He’s starting to get his rythm now, starting to make adjustments at the plate and getting good pitches to hit,” Roman said. “He helps a lot because we needed that big bat of his in the lineup.”
The win Saturday was significant to GW not only because it showed the Trojans can prevail when facing adversity, but Beacon (6-1, Manhattan A West) was also its best league foe by far up to this point. Of George Washington’s previous six league wins, four had come by run-rule margins. The latest win was the opposite — it was hard-fought.
“Beacon is real strong, but we showed today what we do is fight back, we never die,” Torres said. “It gives us confidence we can beat any New York City team.”