Lake George uses hot bats to advance to Class CC title game

SARATOGA SPRINGS — When you score multiple runs in every inning of a baseball game, you should expect to win. That’s exactly what happened with Lake George varsity baseball on Wednesday night at Veteran’s Memorial Park as they beat Greenwich in the Class CC semifinals by a final score of 18-7.

The Warriors set the tone early in the game as they jumped out to a 6-0 lead by the end of the second inning, courtesy of big hits from Michael Johnson, Sean Butkowski and Jack Kelleher that gave them a gig advantage early on.

Greenwich scored a run in the third inning, but Lake George scored two more to make the contest 8-1 by the bottom of the third inning. That half of the third frame was when Greenwich made their statement, scoring five runs and getting to within two runs, now trailing 8-6 following an RBI single from Charlie Gartner and a slew of Lake George errors.

Despite the setback the Warriors did not falter as they scored more runs in the fourth inning and did not look back, outscoring Greenwich 10-1 the rest of the way and scored the win by a difference of 11 runs. Lake George put up 21 hits in the game total, a dominant offensive performance.

“We have a lineup, I think, in place where we do not have an easy out top to bottom,” Lake George coach Erik Hoover said. “Guys had quality at-bats, and that’s been our M.O. the whole season, is you can’t go down striking out, looking or swinging. You want to put the ball in play.”

The team went through the order nearly six full times for a seven-inning game, sending a mind-boggling 51 batters to the plate for the game. Hoover’s plan for the team not striking out worked, as the only struck out three times for the entire game.

Butkowski was the guy leading the way for the Warriors, going 3-6 with a double and recorded four RBI’s.

“We really needed it. It comes at a clutch time in the season. I don’t know how many hits we had today, but the bats were just on fire,” said Butkowski, a freshman.

Every single member of the Lake George starting lineup got a hit while six of them recorded multi-hit nights. This was in part of Greenwich reliever Christian O’Brien, who pitched five innings of relief after pitching 4 1/3 innings on Monday.

“It would be a little different if I had him at 100%, but he battled out there. That’s the way it goes in the sectional tournament,” Greenwich coach Duke Beck said.

Lake George will now advance to the Class CC championship game, where they will face Notre Dame-Bishop Gibbons. That game will be played on Friday and will begin at 7 p.m. at Joe Bruno Stadium.