Senior Dean Bonneau pitched 3.2 innings of scoreless relief as Bates baseball picked up its first-ever win in the NESCAC Championship with a 4-2 victory over Amherst to earn Bobcat of the Week honors for the week of May 5-11.
On Saturday, in the team’s first elimination game in the tournament, the Amherst, Mass., native entered the game with one out in the bottom of the sixth with Bates trailing 2-1 and proceeded to record two straight outs.
Bonneau faced just four batters in the seventh, and after the Bobcats scored three runs in the top of the eighth to take a 4-2 lead, he dealt with the minimum six batters over the next two innings to earn his fourth win of the season. He notched two strikeouts in the ninth to bring his total in the outing to three.
The Bobcat defense played its part in the effort as junior first baseman Rockwell Jackson (Fort Worth, Texas) and first-year shortstop Brendan Fox (West Hartford, Conn.) turned a double play in the eighth with Jackson making the latter out on a brief rundown.
The Amherst Regional High School product finished the season as the team’s leader in ERA (1.40). On the year, he struck out 25 batters over 25.2 innings in 14 appearances.
