One bad inning was all it took to unravel the Newburgh Free Academy Goldbacks.

The Goldbacks made two errors on one play in the fifth inning, leading to four Pine Bush runs as Newburgh was beaten, 5-2, on Friday at Mataraza Field in Pine Bush.

“When you play good teams that’s what’s going to happen,” Newburgh coach Scott Seabury said. “Good teams are going to capitalize on mistakes and that’s what they did today.”

Tyler Voltaire was cruising and leading 2-1 before everything fell apart on him in the fifth inning.

Jack Taylor singled to start the inning, and after Sean Garcia bunted him over to second base on a disputed tag play, Michael Jacques singled Taylor to third. Then after a pop-out, Mike DeSena reached on an error by Newburgh shortstop Joe Alicea, which scored two runs to give the Bushmen a 3-2 lead.

Then Cancelliere’s single, a bloop just inside the right-field line and out of the reach of three Newburgh defenders, gave the Bushmen some insurance.

Outside of the fifth, Tyler Voltaire went the distance and only allowed one earned run – an RBI single by Jack Gandolfini in the third inning. He allowed six hits, struck out three and walked one.

“Tyler did an outstanding job,” Seabury said. “That was his first start of the year. We’ve been using him in relief a little bit. He’s one of our trusted relievers, but we’ve played so much baseball, we wanted to give him a start because he’s done such a good job. He was in complete control I thought today, and I wish we could have gotten him a better result.”

The Goldbacks were poised to take a big lead in the third inning when they started stringing some hits together against Pine Bush starter Joseph Sorge, making his first start since the third week of the season.

Sorge dominated the first two innings until a back injury started acting up on him.

He gave up hits to Nick Schmidt, who stole second and then came around to score on John Ahearn’s single. Then after Dylan Iorlano’s RBI single gave Newburgh a 2-0 lead, Pine Bush coach Matt Boffalo brought in Mason Miranowicz to put out the fire.
He acted quickly, striking out Roberto Reade and Joe Ponesse to end the inning. Miranowicz went the rest of the way, allowing only one hit, a double by Schmidt in the seventh inning. He walked two and struck out six.

“Tip the cap,” Seabury said. “They did a good job of taking the bats out of our hands a little bit. We just didn’t capitalize and get the hits when we needed them today, either. We made a couple of mistakes in that inning and gave up the four runs.”

Earlier in the week, the Goldbacks beat the Valley Central Vikings, 6-3, and then beat the Monroe-Woodbury Crusaders, 12-6 on Thursday. They faced the Bushmen again on Saturday to finish the series.

The Goldbacks were beaten by the Bushmen, 12-7, on Saturday afternoon at the Gidney Avenue field.

Alicea drove in two runs and Reade had three hits and an RBI. Ponesse had three hits.

The Goldbacks were halfway through a stretch of games on seven straight days and nine games in 10 days. The big question was how much it would stretch their pitching.

“Hopefully, we have the depth,” Seabury said. “I think we might. We’re rolling with whoever’s fresh. So, we’ve been taking it one day at a time.”