White, Celebration Survive For 3-2 Victory Over Windermere

When the term pitchers’ duel comes to mind in the aftermath of a low-scoring game, it would make sense for the first assumption to be that there was little to no offense for either team thanks to dominant pitching.

Although there certainly was dominant pitching in Monday’s Celebration-Windermere showdown between Cooper White and Matt Coles, the teams combined for 14 hits and rarely went an inning without a single baserunner. White outdueled Coles and limited his mistakes en route to the Storm taking home the win, 3-2.

White, who was just a pitch shy of 100 for the night, struck out four and walked one in his seven innings. Though White did give up eight hits, a combined five of which went to Austin Bergner (two) and Rob DeVarona (three), the hard-throwing senior threw first-pitch strikes to 18 of the 30 men — or six of every 10 hitters — who came to the plate. White also was key on offense, delivering an RBI double in the first inning to give himself a 1-0 lead before even throwing his first pitch.

After the Lakers tied things up at 1 in the bottom of the inning with an Alex Crotty RBI single, the Storm retook the lead thanks to a clutch, two-out double by the number nine hitter Alejandro Hernandez to score Nick Matos. Celebration added run number three in the fifth inning after Adrian Ramos singled with two outs, stole second and third base, and then scored on an error. Rob DeVarona tried to give the Lakers some momentum after scoring on an error in the bottom of the sixth inning, but Storm manager Jay Welsh made the gutsy decision to stick with White — one, as evidenced by the senior recording four straights out to end the ballgame, clearly paid off.

Starting and taking the loss for the Lakers was Matt Coles, who struck out two and pitched five and two-thirds innings before being lifted in the sixth for reliever Noah Mitchem. Across 15 pitches, Micthem retired all four batters who faced him and also induced a strikeout in the seventh inning.

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