By Matt Schneidman
July 21, 2014

After the game, head coach Mike Roberts stood right outside the dugout and told his team they “hit the crap out of the ball.”

Although Cotuit only put up three runs, that wasn’t indicative of how well the Kettleers swung the bats on Monday at Brewster.

Tres Barrera (right) blasted 3-run homer to insure the win. Photo by Stephen Arriz

On a day where the lineup didn’t have to do much when Vince Fiori (South Carolina) dazzled on the mound, Tres Barrera (Texas) and Jameson Fisher (Southeastern Louisiana) made sure it was enough. Barrera blasted a two-run home run in the sixth to provide key insurance runs, and Fisher broke out of a slump with a 3-for-4 day to help the Kettleers (15-18-1) to a 3-0 victory over Brewster (12-21) at Stony Brook Elementary.

Several other Kettleers were just feet away from home runs of their own in a three-run game that could’ve just as easily been a blowout.

“Jackson (Glines) and Rhett (Wiseman) almost had two home runs today, so I feel like everybody’s seeing the ball really well,” Fisher said. “If there’s a few guys struggling, it’s just baseball and we’ll all come around.”

Today was certainly the day that Fisher himself came around, as the first baseman emerged from a 2-for-22 slump that had dropped his average 56 percentage points.

He scored the Kettleers’ first run after reaching base via a bloop double that just grazed the white-colored grass in left field.

“I’ve been going through a grind lately, but it’s just one of those things,” Fisher said. “You have your ups and down so I’ve just been trying to stick with it, just trying to grind it out and wait for my hits to come back.

“I feel like I was just seeing the ball really well today, not trying to do too much with it and just putting the barrel on it.”

In the sixth, Jordan Ebert (Auburn) beat out a potential double-play ball to keep the inning alive.

With two outs and a man on first, Barrera sent a full-count pitch well into the trees just left of the scoreboard to give Cotuit a 3-0 lead.

It was Barrera’s fourth home run of the season in just 11 games, and four of his 10 hits on the summer have left the yard.

“In a close game like that, those really help,” Barrera said. “I was just thinking up in the zone because 3-2 count, you don’t want to chase anything in the dirt.

“I was just looking for something up, he left me a breaking ball up and I just put a good swing on it.”

With Fiori cruising, Glines (Michigan) and Wiseman (Vanderbilt) each displayed their warning-track power that threatened to give the visitors an even larger lead. Although the crowd was brought to its feet for eventual outs, it was the quality of the at-bat and contact on the ball that Roberts was pleased with.

After the game, John Norwood (Vanderbilt) joked with his college teammate Wiseman by telling him he had terrible at-bats, to which Wiseman responded with a smile.

On a day where the output at the plate was enough to get the job done in a low-scoring game, Cotuit was relieved to be able to joke about hard-hit outs rather than harp on what could’ve been.