AUGUSTA — Cony High School senior Payton Kennison is a better pitcher than he was two months ago.
It showed Wednesday when he shut out Mt. Blue 4-0 on two hits in an Eastern Maine Class A quarterfinal matchup.
The win pushes fourth-seeded Cony (10-7) into a semifinal matchup Saturday against the winner of today’s game between Brunswick and Bangor. Fifth-seeded Mt. Blue finishes at 8-9.
Kennison (6-2) lost to these same Cougars 5-2 in the season opener in Augusta, but he had a much sharper outing Wednesday as he struck out five and walked two on just 79 pitches.
“At the beginning of the year I wasn’t fundamentally sound within my mechanics,” Kennison said. “Me and Coach (Don) Plourde worked on that, sharpened it up and I feel better.”
Kennison gave up a two-out double to Cam Abbott in the first inning, a single to Tye Nichols in the third and didn’t allow a runner past second base. He also didn’t face more than four Mt. Blue batters in any inning.
“We worked a lot on his fastball in the pen and that seemed to be the dominant pitch for him,” Cony catcher Tayler Carrier said. “He was hitting locations very well and I thought he threw a great game.”
The Rams scored their four runs in the second inning, all of them unearned, against tough-luck starter Colton Lawrence. The rally began with two out when Lawrence hit designated hitter Justin Rodrigue on the helmet. Mitchell Bonenfant followed with a sharp single up the middle then Charlie Hallak’s ground ball to third was misplayed to load the bases. Cony scored two runs when Thomas Foster’s dying liner kicked off the glove of Chase Hekkinen, who dove for the ball in left field. Carrier drew a walk before Reid Shostak singled off the fence in right center to drive in two more runs.
“He’s pitched all the big games for us this year,” Mt. Blue coach Dave Pepin said. “His ERA was 0.74 going into the game . . . and all four runs were unearned. We’ve been pitching well and playing good defense all year, that’s what got us here. We only made one error in the last four games. We picked a bad time to do it.”
Kennison grew stingier as the game wore on, retiring 12 of the last 13 batters he faced. He started nearly every batter he faced with a strike and worked from there.
“You’ve got to get ahead of these guys,” he said. “They’re really good at working the count as we saw first game of the year. You come in and get strike one, get them where you want them, then you can put them away.”
Kennison pitched carefully to Abbott, walking the Cougars’ No. 3 batter twice.
“Abbott’s a great hitter,” Kennison said. “He almost put one over that right-field fence. We got him off balance with some off-speed stuff, but he was able to draw the walks.” The win was the 10th in the last 12 games for the Rams who began the season at 0-5. They supported Kennison with errorless defense, highlighted by Tyler Tardiff’s diving catch in left off Amos Herrin to open the second inning.
Gary Hawkins — 621-5638
Twitter: @GaryHawkinsKJ
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