STANDISH — There’s nothing like a four-run seventh inning to cure a game’s worth of frustration.

No. 8 St. Dominic could forget numerous squandered opportunities in Wednesday night’s Western Class C baseball final because it came through when it needed to most, breaking a 1-1 tie in the top of the seventh with four runs to defeat No. 2 Winthrop 5-1 at Mahaney Diamond at St. Joseph’s College.

Mitch Lorenz snapped the tie with a two-run single and gave St. Dom’s its first regional title since 2011.

After surrendering a first-inning home run to Mario Meucci, St. Dom’s starting pitcher Mike Bryant shut down the most potent lineup in Western C, allowing just one hit over the next five innings and three overall while striking out eight, walking three and hitting a batter.

“Mike battled,” St. Dom’s coach Bob Blackman said. “He had a hard time locating his curve in innings one, two, three. He was really having a hard time and I said ‘Don’t give up on it. We can’t give up on it. I think in the fourth, it was there, and we could do multiple things with it. We really rode the curve after that.”

It was a first-pitch fastball that Meucci blasted to left to stake the Ramblers (16-3) to a 1-0 lead in the first. Lorenz tied it with a two-out bloop single to center in the third.

The Saints (15-5) left the go-ahead run at third later that inning, starting a string of five straight innings where they left a runner standing 90 feet away from the lead.

It actually started a chain of missed opportunities for both teams.

Allen was thrown out at third after oversliding the bag on a ground ball to short in the bottom of the third. St. Dom’s stranded runners at second and third with one out in the fourth against Winthrop starter Matt Sekerak, then couldn’t capitalize after starting the fifth with back-to-back singles thanks to a 4-6-3 double play by the Ramblers.

“Only one time I kicked myself was when we had first-and-second no outs and I let Mitch swing,” Blackman said. “I was going to give him one swing and he hit into the double play instead of bunting.”

Winthrop, in turn, put two on with one out in the bottom of the frame and left those runners at second and third after Bryant fanned the last two hitters.

“Not too many hits up on that board,” Winthrop coach Marc Fortin said. “I thought if we could hit him, we might be in business. We’ve been ripping the ball all year. He pitched very well.”

Ray Mosca started the winning rally with a walk. Bryant followed with a single, his second hit of the game. That led Fortin to lift Sekerak in favor of lefthander Ben Allen.

Allen’s first pitch went in the dirt, allowing Mosca and Bryant to move up a base. Lorenz lined the next pitch for his two-run single. Caleb Labrie drove him home with a double and later scored on a passed ball.

“Matty was up to 115 (pitches). They had been hitting him the last couple of innings,” Fortin said. “I”m second-guessing myself. Maybe I should have gone with Jacob (Hickey). Ben usually takes a little while to warm up, has a tough time getting through the first inning. He said he was ready. He said he was loose. I may second-guess that all summer.”

Winthrop loaded the bases on two errors and a hit batter in the seventh and got the tying run to the plate in Dakota Carter, but Bryant got him to pop up to second to clinch the Saints’ seventh Western C title since 2004.

Randy Whitehouse — 621-5638

rwhitehouse@mainetoday.com

Twitter: @RAWmaterial33