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After having its first off day of the season on Monday, the Chatham Anglers (4-2-1) return to action on Tuesday when it will travel across the Sagamore Bridge to face the Wareham Gatemen (5-2).
The matchup will be a battle of division leaders as Chatham leads the Eastern Division and Wareham is on top of the Western Division.
The Anglers are currently riding a three-game win streak. During the run, the Anglers have scored 21 runs and given up four. In the batter’s box, Chatham has 24 hits, five home runs and has drawn 12 walks. On the mound, the pitching staff has allowed just 15 hits while striking out 30 opposing hitters.
In their last time out against Bourne, the A’s took both games of a doubleheader. Chatham won the first contest, 7-2, and the second one, 4-1.
Tuesday's matchup features two of the best power hitters in the country — Chatham’s Spencer Torkelson (Arizona State) and Wareham’s Andrew Vaughn (California). Torkelson — the Pac-12 Rookie of the Year — has three home runs on the season after leading the NCAA in long balls this spring with 25. Vaughn — the Pac-12 Player of the Year — also has three homers on the Cape after hitting 23 round-trippers during the spring.
Helping Vaughn lead the Chatham offense is Austin Shenton (Florida International). Shenton currently leads the CCBL with a .474 batting average. Down two runs in the bottom of the seventh in game one of Wareham’s doubleheader against Orleans on Sunday, Shenton hit a walk-off three run dinger.
In the first matchup between the two teams on Opening Day at Veterans Field, the Gatemen got the best of the Anglers. Wareham scored three runs in the first to get off to an early lead and tacked on one more in both the fifth and sixth innings. While Chatham managed to cut the lead to one, the Gatemen broke the game wide-open with a seven-run ninth inning sparked by a Vaughn grand slam.
Anglers manager Tom Holliday said the balance in right-handed and left-handed hitters is starting to show for the team. With more and more players showing up every few days, Holliday said that the Chatham lineup is going to be very tough to beat.
“If a righty is going to beat us, he better be pretty good because we have a lot of left-handed bats,” Holliday said. “Now with a left-hander against us, with [Adam] Fogel and [Jorge] Arenas and [Rylan] Thomas, we can stop that left hander from beating us.”