Flood wins final two games, gets by Blackstone

Kevin Pomeroy
Posted 8/7/14

Flood Auto manager Brian Leahey still had a good feeling about his group after it lost game one of its best-of-three series in the first round of the Connie Mack playoffs to Blackstone on …

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Flood wins final two games, gets by Blackstone

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Flood Auto manager Brian Leahey still had a good feeling about his group after it lost game one of its best-of-three series in the first round of the Connie Mack playoffs to Blackstone on Sunday.

His team played better in the late innings, and it had played better overall down the stretch in the regular season. Resiliency was a trait it knew well.

Sure enough, Flood came through. It evened the series on Monday with a 2-1 victory behind a complete-game effort on the mound from Marc Andrews, and it advanced to the quarterfinals with a 3-0 victory on Monday thanks to another complete game pitching performance, this one from Joe Maynard.

With its backs against the wall, Flood found a way to get the job done and pull the upset, as it was the No. 3 seed in the Southeast Division, while Blackstone was the No. 2 Northwest seed and boasted the second-best record in the league during the regular season.

“They brought it Monday night and they just carried it into last night,” Leahey said. “They stayed up, stayed positive and just wanted to play good hard baseball.”

The team’s turnaround after the game one defeat started early on Monday, as it scored two runs in the first inning to grab the lead.

That was all it needed with Andrews on the mound. He scattered three hits over the seven innings, and overcame two Flood errors to earn the win. Flood had just three hits of its own, but it didn’t end up making much of a difference.

“Marc threw strong Monday for us going the whole game,” Leahey said.

The next day, Flood traveled back to Blackstone, where it had struggled mightily in game one. This time, it was much cleaner.

The teams battled into the fifth inning in a scoreless tie before Flood finally started to put it all together.

Billy Roberge had a sacrifice fly in the fifth, Andrew Hopgood doubled in a run and Drew Almonte moved a runner to third on a base hit, who eventually scored on a Blackstone error.

“At first they were trying to crush the ball too much,” Leahey said. “They kept popping it up. We started to settle down and that’s when we started to get a couple hits here and there.”

Maynard finished the job from there, pushing Flood through to the next round.

“He’s one of the returning players,” Leahey said of Maynard. “He was used out of the bullpen for us last year, then this year he’s one of those kids for us. That’s why we turned to him last night, facing that do-or-die game.”

Flood’s next opponent, Warwick PAL, will represent another sizeable test, with a berth in the semifinals on the line. The two teams split two regular season meetings this season, with PAL winning 6-0 in the early season before Flood came back to win a game later in the season 3-0.

PAL is the top seed in the Southeast Division, and swept Providence in the first round.

“I feel confident our guys will be ready,” Leahey said.

PAL is the top seed in the Southeast. The first game of the series will be today at 5:30 p.m. at Mickey Stevens, with game two scheduled for 5 p.m. at Bishop Hendricken. A third game, if necessary, will be Saturday, with a time to be determined.

“That (loss to PAL) was early in the season,” Leahey said. “That was basically when things started turning around for our guys. They started waking up and working together better as a team.”

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