LEWISTON — Early- and mid-season strength and conditioning paid off in the postseason Thursday for Lewiston ace Corbin Hyde.

With pitching at a premium in a condensed postseason, Hyde stretch his start against Brewer a full seven innings. He battled through 131 pitches, fanned 13 batters and executed a timely pickoff to end a threat late in the game, leading the Blue Devils to a 6-2 victory over the Witches in an Eastern A quarterfinal baseball matchup.

“I definitely feel good about the outing, we got the win,” Hyde said.

Hyde reached 93 pitches by the end of the fifth inning, and 113 after six, but instead of going to the bench for another pitcher, Lewiston skipper Todd Cifelli stuck with his ace, assuring Lewiston a full complement of pitchers for Saturday’s semifinal showdown with Erskine Academy.

“Corbin’s one of the top pitchers in the state. He had good stuff today,” Lewiston coach Todd Cifelli said. “Our defense wasn’t as tight as it usually is behind him, but he was able to pitch around that, and he has tremendous conditioning. One of the reasons we kept him on a pitch count early in the year was so that later in the season, if he needed to extend a bit, he could.”

“I’ve been doing a lot of conditioning this year,” Hyde said. “Early in the year, in a game against Brunswick, I couldn’t go real deep, and I knew I’d have to in the playoffs, so I really worked on conditioning.”

Hyde’s effort made up for a sluggish day at the plate for Lewiston, which also had a hard time against Brewer in the regular season. Lewiston managed only six hits in six innings, three of which came in a two-run, insurance-producing sixth frame.

“It’s not necessarily how you want to play playoff baseball,” Cifelli said, “but our pitcher grinded it out on the mound, we grinded at-bats out, had some chances to break the game open but didn’t, but we were still good enough to get six runs.”

Part of that had to do with facing a pair of excellent Brewer pitchers. Kyle Alexander pitched the first two innings for the Witches before giving way to Jeffrey Weeks, who went the final four. Each pitcher allowed three runs — two earned and one unearned — and combined for a pair of strikeouts.

“Their pitchers were tough on us, and neither team was able to get a big inning going,” Cifelli said.

But the Witches also issued six walks and hit three batters, allowing Lewiston to scamper around the bases with its typical, aggressive approach.

“A couple hit batters, a couple of walks and they did some things fundamentally well to score early,” Brewer coach Dana Corey said. “We had a couple opportunities early and couldn’t make anything out of them.”

Shawn Ricker drove home Lewiston’s first run in the first inning with a grounder to the shortstop, plating Nate Berube, who’d reach on a single and advanced on a walk and a wild pitch. The Devils tacked on two more in the second. After a double from Chris Madden, Alexander plunked Eric Soucy. The pair advanced on a sacrifice bunt by David Cusson. Alex Small drove Madden in with a fielder’s choice that forced a throwing error, and Soucy scampered home on the errant throw.

The teams traded runs in the fifth. Brewer got on the board when Yuhi Sasaki reached on an infield hit and then capitalized on two consecutive errors to plate the Witches’ first run. Lewiston got that one back on a throwing error in the bottom of the fifth, but Brewer again pulled within two in the sixth with one run on two singles and a walk.

“We had some mind spasms in the field, where we probably could have taken some outs,” Cifelli said. “At the end of the day, we were able to get through that.”

Hyde escaped further damage in that inning when he caught John Hand in a delayed steal at second. He one-hopped the throw to shortstop Luke Cote, who applied the tag.

Lewiston tacked on two more in the bottom of the sixth on a walk and three singles, the latter coming from Chris Madden.

“Today wasn’t our best day defensively, but (Matt) Bowen had a big hit with an RBI single, then I wasn’t trying to do too much with it, it worked out and we got two runs out of it.”

Second-seeded Lewiston will host No. 6 Erskine at 4 p.m. Saturday after the Eagles ousted No. 3 Cony 1-0 Thursday.