SALEM — It started double, double, and with Aaron McGinness on the hill, Traip Academy was in trouble.

Two-baggers by Tim Smith and Josh Beedy staked Mt. Abram High School to a quick cushion Tuesday, and McGinness carried a no-hitter into the fifth inning of the Roadrunners’ 8-4 Western Class C baseball preliminary game triumph.

No. 7 Mt. Abram (10-5) fattened that 3-0 lead to 8-0 in the fourth with the help of two Traip errors and consecutive RBI singles by Hank Poulin, McGinness and Beedy.

“We’re a team that plays a lot better when we get the lead,” said Beedy, whose first-inning launch to left field drove home leadoff hitter Smith and McGinness.

The Roadrunners avenged a 1-0 loss to Traip in last year’s prelims. They now turn their attention to commencement and the seniors’ Project Graduation proceedings Wednesday night before a quarterfinal date Thursday at No. 2 St. Dom’s.

McGinness, one of those upperclassmen, is bound for Division III Fisher College next year.

Wielding a fastball that topped out at 85 mph on the radar gun, the southpaw struck out 12, walked five, plunked a pair and had the Rangers (8-9) flailing and flabbergasted for most of the afternoon.

“That’s the best he’s thrown this year, no doubt,” said Mt. Abram coach Ryan Palmer.

Mt. Abram’s ace struck out the side in the first and second innings and retired eight in a row during his most untouchable stretch.

Jeremy Baker’s seeing-eye single through the box ended the no-hit bid with one out in the fifth. Back-to-back hit batsmen followed and set the table for Mark McKenney’s bases-loaded walk.

McGinness recovered his rhythm and struck out his Traip counterpart, Eric Spear, before Jay Clement snared Jay Cuttle’s line drive to shortstop and ended the scare.

Poulin also made a diving stab of a would-be double down the first-base line for Mt. Abram, which didn’t commit an error until the seventh.

“Everybody was definitely behind me out there,” McGinness said. “I felt good at the beginning, but then I wasn’t getting the same calls. When we scored those runs early, that pretty much made the game.”

Parker Kennedy knocked home Beedy with the Roadrunners’ third run of the opening frame.

Kennedy nearly rounded the bases after Traip booted the ball and it rolled to the deepest part of the park. But Riley Sheahan, Lucas Edwards and catcher Christian Montembeau collaborated to cut down the designated hitter at the plate.

Spear held Mt. Abram hitless from there until the fourth, when two missed connections on fielder’s choices at second fueled the Roadrunners’ two-out rally.

In all, Traip committed five errors.

“We said to just keep hitting ground balls,” Palmer said. “Toward the end of the game they started to make the plays, but there were a couple times they helped us out. And the middle of our lineup stepped up. Our 4-5-6 guys (McGinness, Beedy, Kennedy) all had big RBIs.”

Edwards’ leadoff single and stolen base preceded Montembeau’s RBI single for Traip in the sixth, eliminating any thoughts of McGinness going the distance. He stranded his seventh and eight runners in that frame but ended it with 131 pitches.

Thursday’s scheduled starter, Smith, closed it out with the help of a pickoff in the seventh. Cuttle clubbed an RBI triple for the Rangers, followed by an Edwards fly ball that was lost in the sun for a base hit.

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