CONCORD – There was no need for a pitch clock at Warren Doane Diamond on Wednesday. Concord’s Matt Drewes tossed a 76-pitch complete game, guiding the Tide to a 2-1 D-I baseball win over Winnacunnet in a tight hour and 15 minutes.

Concord is now 4-1 to start the 2023 season.

A long home run from Nathaniel Wachter gave Concord a 2-0 lead in the first inning, and that was all the Tide needed.

Here are three notes from the victory and Concord’s encouraging start to the season:

Drewes worked masterfully on the mound: The pitching line tells most of the story: seven innings pitched, one hit, one run (zero earned), one walk and two strikeouts. Drewes lived around the plate, forcing Winnacunnet to put the ball in play early in the count. Besides the fifth inning, when the Warriors scored a run because of two Concord errors, he made quick work of the opposition.

“I felt very confident from the start,” Drewes said. “Just had to get the first out and then go on a roll. That’s how my mindset works.”

The only hit he allowed came in the sixth, a two-out double for Jake Fredericks. Drewes promptly retired the next hitter, Evan Gaffney, on a fly ball to center field to end the threat.

The game grew tensest in the top of the seventh, when Drewes walked Mason McDonald with two outs and ran a 3-2 count on Timmy Knight before inducing a weak ground ball back to the mound to end the game.

“My job’s just to pitch, so trying to reach the end of the game is the goal every time,” Drewes said. “I was very happy to be at that moment: 3-2, exciting, right back at me, and I got the final out, so I was very happy about that.”

The performance also meant head coach Scott Owen could rest his bullpen with six games in an eight-day stretch coming up, starting Friday against Nashua South.

“He threw 76 pitches; that’s insane,” Owen said. “Anytime you don’t have to go to your bullpen it’s huge, and it helps us moving forward with what we want to do.”

Concord struggled to make adjustments at the plate against Winnacunnet’s Ethan Nowak: Like Drewes, Nowak also pitched brilliantly, holding Concord to just two hits. The lefty consistently lived on the outside part of the plate against the Tide’s right-handed hitters.

Owen would’ve liked to have seen more in-game adjustments.

“You gotta be able to hit the ball the other way, and we didn’t do a very good job of staying on his fastball and hitting it the other way,” he said. “If we start hitting the ball hard the other way, he’s gotta make an adjustment and maybe we get the ball in and get some pitches to hit.”

Wachter’s home run probably would’ve been the highlight moment regardless of the outcome, sailing well into the trees in left-center field. Owen still would’ve liked to have seen the offense provide Drewes with a little more support on the mound.`

The Tide have won four of its first five games without playing its best: Until Wednesday, Concord’s offense showed up in each game; the team entered the day averaging nearly nine runs per game. The pitching has generally been solid, except in last Friday’s 9-7 loss to Bedford. And the defense has had moments of success, but also periods like Wednesday’s fifth inning.

As Owen said, however, still finding ways to win provides a promising early sign for what the team can accomplish this season.

“We haven’t put every facet together yet,” he said. “We played pretty good baseball today, so we’ll take that and just keep trying to work on getting better.”

And according to Drewes, all 14 guys seem to be on the same page as to what they’re hoping to accomplish.

“We have great team chemistry,” he said. “We’re working hard in practice. … We’re ready to go every game.”

]]>