LAKEWOOD, Ohio (March 30, 2023) -- Stellar pitching and a couple crooked numbers hung in the latter innings lifted Rocky River to a 7-0 win at Lakewood Thursday.

Senior Hudson Wissman and sophomore Henry Tovissi combined to record the shutout for the Pirates who won for the first time this spring. Wissman worked around six walks, working four scoreless frames while allowing just one hit. Tovissi closed out the win with three scoreless innings; he allowed one hit and one walk while fanning two.

And that shutdown pitching would be needed. The west-side neighbors were engaged in a 0-0 tussle until the top of the fourth when the Maroon & White plated four runs. A leadoff walk and subsequent steal by Josh Mommers kickstarted the inning. Mommers came around to score on an RBI single by Thomas Rossi. The inning continued with the Sons of Blackbeard parlaying a single (Wissman), sacrifice bunt (Rees Heigle), and double (Tovissi) into three more runs.

Wissman finished his outing in the bottom of that inning. The senior worked into and out of james in the second, third, and fourth. He did well to extricate himself from trouble by inducing clutch ground-ball contact at three key points in each of those frames. Two of those grounders became double-plays turned by a Pirate defense that played errorless ball throughout.

The Double-R tacked on three more runs in the top of the sixth, leveraging two walks and an error along the way.

Tovissi worked around a Ranger double in the sixth and a leadoff walk in the seventh. Rocky River (1-2) limited Lakewood to just two leadoff men reaching in the seven-inning contest.

Rossi went 2-for-4 with an RBI and a run scored. He logged the only two-hit game on either side. The junior slugger has thus far gone 4-for-8, with a double, triple, and two runs batted in.

by Skip Snow

# # # River # # #