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MVP South Shore Wins Big behind Avery Acquaviva’s Pitching and Potent Offense

by Joe Bello

MVP South Shore and B1 Ghost Graziano faced off in a LI Boys of Summer 16u American matchup on Thursday evening. The 1st place South Shore took care of business in what would be a blowout victory for them, taking the game 16-0 over Ghost.

South Shore improves their record to 16-2 in the 16u American Division with the win.

Here’s how we got there. South Shore started off hot in the top of the 1st inning, with their first 5 batters reaching base safely. They would score 4 in the 1st, an RBI single by Chris Amodeo, an RBI groundout by Nick Dragos and the other 2 scoring off of errors.

Avery Acquaviva would start on the mound for South Shore in this one, and he was impressive. Throughout his complete game (4 innings) shutout of the Ghost, he worked quickly and with ease navigating through the opposing lineup.

The score would be doubled after 2 innings of action with South Shore up 8-0. Brian McGoldrick ripped an RBI single to left field which scored one of the four, the other three came off of errors.

Jack Aramini would extend his team’s lead to nine in the top of the 3rd, with a sacrifice fly hit into right field. Marco Garcia of B1 Ghost made a spectacular diving catch to keep the ball in front of him in right field. As a result, instead of scoring multiple runs had it gotten past him, South Shore was only able to put one on the board during that play and in the 3rd.

Acquaviva kept on doing his thing on the mound for South Shore, working fairly quick innings to keep his hitters fresh and at the plate.

The 4th inning is where things really opened up for South Shore in the runs department. It started off with a 2-RBI single ripped into shallow left field by Dragos. Then Rob Brisette grounded out, scoring the 12th run of the game for his team. The next two runs would come in off of a ball thrown out of play and an error, extending the lead to 14. Mike Fortunato singled to score the 15th run and then an error scored the 16th to officially give South Shore a 16-0 lead over Ghost.

This is where things would stand after the top of the 4th, leading to the run-rule being in effect if Ghost didn’t score at least seven runs in the bottom half of the inning.

Acquaviva wouldn’t let that happen though, as he closed the door on his abbreviated complete game shutout. His final line on the mound Thursday was 4 innings pitched, 1 hit, 0 runs, 2 walks, and 7 strikeouts, an excellent performance to notch a victory for his team.

Axcess Baseball spoke to Acquaviva after the win.

“My sinker was working really well today.” Acquaviva said. “Sometimes I would throw my curveball and it would throw them off.”

When asked how he stays fresh in a game where his team has a lot of long offensive innings, he kept it simple with his answer.

“I’m just going to use bands,” he said. “Throw around with my catcher, that’s really it.”

As mentioned, South Shore improved to 16-2 with the victory. While B1 Ghost Graziano now stands at 10-11 in the LI Boys of Summer 16u American Division.