Long Beach remains positive

Long Beach faced one of Nassau’s hottest pitchers on Monday and scratched across a run against East Meadow’s Charlie Cucchiara but it wasn’t enough for the Marines to halt their winless streak.

Cucchiara allowed four hits, struck out 12 and walked none as the host Jets prevailed, 3-1, for their fourth consecutive victory. His strikeout-to-walk ratio for 2018 is now 52 to 3. The Marines scored on a sixth-inning RBI single off the bat of sophomore catcher Evan DeNardo.

Long Beach’s Sam Brinster was just as dominant in a complete-game performance, allowing four hits and two walks with eight strikeouts. None of the runs was earned. 

“We can’t take anything away from their pitcher, he was great,” Long Beach coach Jason Zizza said. “Sam was great for us too. They had almost the same pitching lines.

“It’s frustrating because we’ve had three one-run conference losses, a tie and now a two-run loss,” he added. “To the kids’ credit, they’re not hanging their heads and they just keep working hard to get better every day. They know the end goal is to make the playoffs and it’s looking good.”

Brinster’s effort on the mound lowered his ERA to 2.25. He has 37 strikeouts in 31 innings and has been on the winning side in all but one of Long Beach’s victories. The Marines are 4-8-1 in Conference AA-III following Monday’s defeat with two more games against East Meadow and next week’s series with Calhoun remaining.

“Our pitchers are throwing well and we’ve changed the lineup, putting the higher on-base percentage guys at the top,” Zizza said. “We’ve come up just short on many occasions and I’m proud of our compete level. We could just as easily be 8-4 instead of 4-8.”

There’s also a 7-7 tie with Herricks on the record. Zizza has mixed feelings about the April 26 result because the Marines scored the last five runs of the game to avoid the loss, but also had a runner on third with less than two outs in the seventh and eighth innings and couldn’t cash in.

“It was an exciting game and we ran out of daylight,” he said.

Sophomore Aidan White homered and drove in three runs, John Diaz went 4-for-4, and DeNardo (.350 average) went 2-for-4 with two RBIs to lead the comeback. Brinster tossed three scoreless innings of relief.

The Marines won four of their first seven conference games behind the arms and bats of seniors Brinster and Evan Garcia. Brinster went 4-for-5 with three RBIs and got the win on the mound April 17 at Plainview in a game Zizza described as the team’s best of the year. Garcia has a 1.75 ERA over 24 innings and leads the team in batting at a .386 clip with 10 runs scored.

“I’m proud of these kids,” said Zizza, who also lauded the efforts of senior Dillon Razler and juniors Devon McKenna and Michael Hladky. “They’re gritty and working hard.”