Cotuit Outlasts Harwich in Cape Cod League’s Longest Championship Round Game

On August 8, 2019, the championship matchup was set – but neither team had been expected to make it that far, and the teams that were favored to win were nowhere to be found.

The Chatham Anglers won the Cape Cod League’s Eastern Division with a thrilling comeback win over the Orleans Firebirds to clinch the division on the next-to-last day of the season – but the Harwich Mariners, led by pitchers Connor McCullough and Joe Boyle, held them hitless in the first game of the first of three playoff rounds, and the A’s never recovered.

In the West, the Wareham Gatemen were the strongest team on paper, with a run differential of +49 or +1.1 per game, the highest in the league, while the Falmouth Commodores rode an 11-game winning streak to end up with the league’s best record – but the Cotuit Kettleers dispatched both of them in the playoffs.

Such is the unpredictability of the Cape Cod League playoffs. And while the championship series featured two teams that only played .500 baseball throughout the regular season – the Cotuit Kettleers at 20-20-4 and the Harwich Mariners at 21-21-2 – the matchup certainly did not disappoint.

Cotuit struck first in the top of the first inning. After their all-star second baseman, Nick Gonzales of New Mexico State, led off with a walk and first baseman Matt Mervis of Duke singled, right fielder Oraj Anu from the University of Kentucky hit a home run to give the visitors a 3-0 lead before Harwich pitcher Connor Sechler of Missouri State even recorded an out. Kettleer starter Harrison Cohen from George Washington retired the side in order in the bottom of the first, but the Mariners got on the board when third baseman Patrick Winkel of UConn hit a two-run double in the second. The teams traded runs in the fourth with a single by Gonzales for Cotuit and a solo home run by Winkel for Harwich.

The score remained 4-3 Kettleers going into the seventh, as both teams’ relievers kept the bats in check. After Cotuit loaded the bases with one out, Nick Zwack of Xavier induced an inning-ending double play. Then, left fielder Chris Galland from Boston College plated shortstop Hal Hughes of LSU with two outs in the bottom of the inning to tie the game, leading Cotuit manager Mike Roberts to move Mervis from first base to the mound. Devin Ortiz from the University of Virginia pitched a one-two-three eighth inning for the hometown Mariners, and in the bottom of the inning, with one out and a runner on first, up stepped – you guessed it – Patrick Winkel.

Winkel hit a towering home run, his second of the game, and his fifth RBI, to give the Mariners their first lead of the evening at 6-4.1 With flamethrower Joe Boyle of Notre Dame on the mound to close it out, the game looked to be in the bag for Harwich. Boyle had struck out 28 batters in 14 innings in the regular season, had his fastball clocked at 100 MPH at the all-star game, and pitched the last three innings of the combined no-hitter against Chatham to start the playoffs – plus he had pitched for Cotuit the previous season. But the Kettleers fought back, with a walk by Anu and singles by two-way player Casey Schmitt from San Diego State, left fielder Mason McWhorter from Georgia Southern, and shortstop Adam Oviedo from TCU – the last coming with two outs – to tie the game again. Harwich appeared to be in position to win the game as their first two batters reached base in the bottom of the ninth. But then Roberts brought in relief pitcher Richard Brereton.

The London-born Brereton, from Division III Emory, had a shaky regular season, posting a 5.78 ERA in 11 appearances.2 But here he made the hunch pay off as he escaped the jam with a fly out and a double play, the latter from the bat of all-star outfielder Joey Wiemer Jr. of the University of Cincinnati. As the game went to extra innings, Brereton followed up his scoreless ninth with a scoreless 10th – then a scoreless 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th. He did not even allow a hit until his sixth inning of work. But his Kettleers could only muster a single hit in those innings as well, as Brereton had to bat for the first time all season, since Cotuit lost the DH when Mervis took the mound.

In the top of the 15th, Oviedo singled with one out, and after the second out, up stepped catcher Cody Pasic to the plate. Pasic had grown up on the Cape, where he not only cheered for Cotuit, but even served as a batboy in 2006. As a player for the University of Maine, Pasic started the summer on a temporary contract, but the Kettleers were so impressed with him that they granted him a permanent roster spot. Here, with the season on the line, he hit a single to center field for his first hit of the game. Next came Gonzales, who had hit the go-ahead home run in the last game of the semifinals against Falmouth. On an 0-and-2 count, Gonzales, once again rising to the occasion, laced a line-drive single to center field to score Oviedo and give Cotuit a 7-6 lead.

Closer Kyle Nicolas of Ball State entered the game, and worked around a one-out single, striking out the side, to close out the second longest game in Cape League playoff history, and the longest ever in the championship round.3 Brereton earned the win with his six innings of scoreless relief, and transferred to Duke for the next year and saw action with the British national team. Gonzales won the league MVP award and was drafted in the first round the next year by the Pittsburgh Pirates, reaching the majors in 2023, while Boyle became a starting pitcher with the Oakland A’s also in 2023 and later joined the Tampa Bay Rays’ rotation. Other players from the game who have since seen major-league action (as of October 2025) include Matt Mervis with the Cubs and Marlins, Casey Schmitt with the Giants, Kyle Nicolas with the Pirates, and Joey Wiemer with the Brewers and Marlins, while Harrison Cohen, Nick Zwack, and Patrick Winkel have reached the Triple-A level.

Cotuit won the next game at home in a blowout, 10-3, behind the pitching of Sean Sullivan, to close out the best-of-three series with a sweep and win their record 17th Cape League title. No one knew it then, but that would be the last game on the Cape until two summers later.

Fr. HUMBERT KILANOWSKI is a Catholic priest of the Dominican order and an associate professor of mathematics at Providence College in Rhode Island. He began his work in sabermetrics as the statistician for his high-school baseball team in 1997 and completed his doctoral studies at The Ohio State University. Since the 2019 season, his primary area of mathematical research has involved evaluating collegiate players in the Cape Cod Baseball League using the methods of data science. A member of the Lajoie-Start Southern New England chapter of SABR, he considers it a lifetime penance to live as a Yankees fan in the midst of Red Sox Nation.

 

SOURCES

For a box score of the game, see https://baseball.pointstreak.com/boxscore.html?gameid=514621

Fischer, Ben. “Cotuit Wins Game 1 – Championship Series,” InfinityProSports, August 8, 2019, https://ism3.infinityprosports.com/ismdata/2012030201/std-sitebuilder/sites/201801/www/en/news/league-news/index.html?article_id=2652 .

Goisman, Matt. “Hometown Hero Pasic Becomes a Champion,” Cape Cod Times (Hyannis, Massachusetts), August 9, 2019, https://www.capecodtimes.com/story/sports/2019/08/10/hometown-hero-pasic-becomes/4493619007/ .

Richard, Mike. “Historically Speaking,” InfinityProSports, June 16, 2020, https://ism3.infinityprosports.com/ismdata/2012030201/std-sitebuilder/sites/201801/www/en/news/index.html?article_id=2733 .

 

NOTES

1 It was at this point that the author arrived at the ballpark. I had been leading a wedding rehearsal in Chatham, and decided to stop by the field on the way back to the house where I was staying in Centerville. Winkel hit his home run right when I exited the car, and the first thing I heard was the roar of the crowd.

2 Brereton came from the author’s high school, Darien (Connecticut), and his coach, Mike Scott, also played on the Cape for Hyannis in 2000.

3 The longest game also involved Harwich. It was on August 10, 2008 – a 1-0 win in 18 innings over Orleans in a semifinals game.