Honu Extinguish CaneFires in Season Finale
North Shore improved to 13-2 against Hawaii Winter Baseball West Division rival West Oahu tonight as the Honu ended the regular season with a 7-3 victory over the CaneFires at Waipahu's Hans L'Orange Park.
North Shore's Daniel Worth came up a home run short of hitting for the cycle as the Detroit tigers prospect notched two doubles, a triple and drove in two with a perfect 4-4 performance. Teammate Mat Gamel went 2-4 with a solo home run in the second inning as the Milwaukee Brewers took sole possession of the league lead in home runs with eight dingers on the season.
Honu (26-12-1) starter Blair Johnson (3-1, 3.26 ERA) notched the victory after striking out two and surrendering two runs on five hits through three innings. Drew Naylor earned his first save of the campaign with two innings of scoreless relief to close out the game.
Joshua Bell went 3-4 with a triple for West Oahu (13-24-2), while teammates Anthony Hatch and Jamie Hoffmann each notched two hits and drove in a run.
CaneFires' starter Michael Cooper fell to 1-3 after allowing four runs on five hits through four innings.
The Honu face the Waikiki BeachBoys in tomorrow's league championship game. First pitch is scheduled for 6 p.m. tomorrow (Monday, Nov. 19) at Hans L'Orange Park. The game will be televised live on K5 The Home Team (KFVE) and broadcast live on ESPN 1420 AM (KKEA).
The probable starters for tomorrow's game are: Shinya Nakayama (6-2, 3.12 ERA) for North Shore; and Kyohei Muranaka (3-1, 2.00 ERA) for Waikiki.