Hickey delivered precisely that Saturday morning with a no-frills, four-hit complete game for the Ramblers in a 9-2 MVC baseball victory over stubborn Mt. Abram.

Winthrop (4-0) needed three runs in the fifth inning and five in the sixth to pull away. Hickey didn’t give up a hit until there were two outs in the fourth and carried a shutout into the seventh.

Penciled in at third in the Ramblers’ rotation behind seniors Matt Sekerak and Ben Allen, Hickey struck out three and walked two in his first start of the season and only the second of his varsity career.

“It was a good game. I hit my spots early,” Hickey said.

Allen, Dakota Carter and Ben Caprara each had two of Winthrop’s nine hits. Carter and Caprara combined for six RBIs.

The perfect opening week wasn’t easy for the Ramblers. They beat Monmouth, Madison and Boothbay each by two runs apiece, including a 9-7 win Friday over the Seahawks in which they trailed by four runs through three innings.

“We haven’t been hitting that great all week, but we found a way to get some hits,” Carter said.

Hickey and Mt. Abram junior Cody White were locked in a pitcher’s duel through four frames that took 45 minutes to play.

Each team cracked only one hit in that stretch. Allen tripled to the gap in right-center field and scored on a two-out error in the Winthrop first. Seth Thomas broke a streak of nine consecutive retired Roadrunners (0-4) by legging out a two-out infield single in the fourth.

Caprara’s throw to Cabot Lancaster turned a rare 9-6 fielder’s choice on a hard-hit ball by Trevor Brackley in the opening frame. Only one Mt. Abram runner reached scoring position prior to the seventh.

The Ramblers played an error-free game behind Hickey.

“He doesn’t throw a lot of off-speed pitches. He doesn’t throw a lot of curve balls,” Winthrop coach Marc Fortin said. “He hits his corners. He goes up. He goes down. With him on the mound, we’ve got one of the best defenses we’ve got going, so let the ball in play.”

Allen struck again to trigger the fifth-inning rally. He singled, stole second and scored on a Sekerak double.

After a pop-up for the second out, Carter and Caprara laced back-to-back RBI singles to chase White (five hits, three earned runs, three strikeouts, three walks) from the game.

Hits by Matt Ingram, Mario Meucci and Carter, along with a walk and a hit batsman, inflicted the damage against sophomore southpaw Sean Allen in the sixth. Allen struck out four in his first outing of the season for Mt. Abram, which suits up three seniors compared to the six in Winthrop’s starting lineup.

“It’s a good win,” Hickey said. “We can’t complain.”

Austin Ladd broke up the shutout with an RBI single in the seventh, plating John May. Draegan Tooker, who reached base prior to Ladd when he was hit by a pitch, scored the second run on the back end of a double steal.

May and White joined Thomas and Ladd with hits for the Roadrunners, who bounced back nicely from a 14-1 loss Friday to Lisbon.

“Every one of these games except this one has been a two-run game, and this was 1-0 until the fifth,” Fortin said. “There’s a lot of parity. We were happy that we could use our four and five (pitchers) yesterday.”

koakes@sunjournal.com

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