Canton A’s upset Rockland, bow to Foxboro in playoffs

Despite a subpar regular season that ended with seven wins in 23 tries, the shorthanded and injury plagued Canton A’s got off to a good start in last week’s Cranberry League playoffs, upsetting fourth-seeded Rockland 3-2 before being eliminated in the semifinals by third-seeded Foxboro 4-2.

Canton led Foxboro as late as the fourth inning in a well-played game threatened by rain showers, and had they won, the A’s would have advanced to play top-seeded Braintree (25-2) in Sunday’s Cranberry League championship. (Braintree defeated Foxboro 1-0 for the title.)

Nevertheless, it was a valiant effort for the ninth-seeded A’s, who got a strong outing from Cory Bergman in the absence of more experienced starting pitchers. Bergman went 5 1/3 innings and gave up just three runs.

On offense, Pat Bogue’s RBI single in the fourth inning gave Canton the lead, but Bogue was called out at second on a controversial throw, which killed the A’s rally. Alex Rossi and Mike Trachtenberg also had a solid day at the plate with two hits apiece.

In the win over Rockland, Canton’s pitching ace Paul Toland threw a gem of a game — a complete-game four hitter with six strikeouts.

Toland finished the season with a 5-1 record over 41 innings with only five earned runs allowed, and according to A’s General Manager Cab Devoll, he has been scouted by at least one Major League team.

Trachtenberg and Rossi also factored into Monday’s win over Rockland, with Rossi following up Trachtenberg’s triple with an RBI single in the seventh inning for the winning run.

Commenting on the season, Devoll said, “Even though we lost some key players, we actually got better in the later stages of the season. We found some ball players who actually can help us. We did much better than the record shows.”

Devoll gave a lot of the credit to pitchers Toland, Tyler Hitchcock, and Chris Smith, and he praised the hitting of Brian Williams, who led the team with a .350 batting average, along with Joe Belmosto and Rossi, who both hit above .300 for the season.

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Posted by Mike Berger on Jul 22 2010. Filed under Beyond CHS, Sports. Both comments and pings are currently closed.