By ELLIOT WELD

AMHERST — In its first season, Amherst’s Sandy Koufax baseball team held Mohawk to three hits in a 4-1 home win Monday.

Amherst scored its first two runs in the bottom of the first inning. Lead-off hitter Andrew Ciaglo singled and then was batted in by JB Mills. Mills then came around to score on a passed ball.

Ciaglo, the starting pitcher for Amherst, did not allow a hit in his three innings and finished with two strikeouts and two walks.

Amherst added to its lead in the fourth inning when Braedon Tudryn hit a double, stole third base and then was batted in by Liam Couhglin.

Amherst it their fourth and final run in the fifth when, with the bases loaded, Jack Feltovic batted in Shire Thompson on a sacrifice fly.

Amherst (8-5-1) went through four pitchers in the game.

Chris Mushenski relieved Ciaglo and allowed one hit and no runs with one strikeout and one walk.

Jack Feltovic pitched one inning, allowing Mohawk’s only run of the game on two hits.

Liam Couhglin pitched one inning, striking out the side. He’ll start Wednesday’s game.

Amherst has used a large pitching staff this summer because of the condensed season.

“If you think about it, most of them all pitched in Little League. They may not all continue to pitch but for this level, you need pitching,” Amherst coach EJ Mills said. “I like to use multiple players, let them get a couple innings and keep them fresh for tomorrow.”

Feltovic was 0-for-3 hitting. He said that after playing at the high school level in the spring, he was expecting faster pitching.

“I think they were also used to the faster pitching because I’ve played against many of them,” Feltovic said of Mohawk (3-11).

Andrew Ciaglo was 1-for-2 with a run scored.

JB Mills was 2-for3 with a run scored.

Tudryn was 1-for-3 with a double and a run scored.

“Early baseball is fastball after fastball,” Mills said. “Now people are changing speeds, they’re throwing breaking balls. That’s the thing is you can’t just be looking for fastballs, now you’ve got to be prepared to stay back and hit those breaking balls, and they’re learning, they’re adjusting to that.”

Mills prefers a low scoring game for his team to win.

“We’ve had a couple of games where it seems like we’ve slugged it but for the most part we’ve been scratching for runs so we need to pitch and play good defense and we did that today,” he said.

The team will focus on its offense leading into the postseason.

“The biggest thing is we need to score more runs and we’ve got to connect some hits together if we’re going to keep going,” Mills said. “That’s the key.”

Amherst has beaten every team in the league at least once in the regular season. The postseason starts July 11. Amherst has three games remaining.

“I’m not a predictor,” Mills said. “We’re going to show up and play hard and we’ll see. Its baseball, anything can happen.”

]]>