Chase Martin of Edward Little High School can’t quite get to a fly ball in right field during Wednesday’s game against Bangor in Auburn. Sun Journal photo by Daryn Slover

AUBURN — Bangor’s uncharacteristic 1-4 record going into its game against Edward Little was, to say the least, deceptive.

The five-time defending Class A state champions looked more like their familiar selves on Wednesday, riding Carson Prouty’s dominant three-hit shutout and some timely hitting to hand the Red Eddies their first loss, 5-0, at Auburn Suburban Little League’s Austin Field.

Prouty, a hard-throwing junior left-hander, was perfect through the first 3 1/3 innings and finished with eight strikeouts, zero walks and one hit batter. He struck out nine.

“I felt good ever since we got on that bus,” Prouty said. “It was game time. We were 1-4 on the year so we needed to have a good pick-up game and I felt like this would be the game.”

Prouty helped himself offensively by knocking in what would prove to be the winning run, reaching base in three of his four plate appearances (single, two walks) while driving in a run and scoring one. Leadoff hitter Colton Trisch reached in all five of his plate appearances (single, error, three walks) and scored a run. James Neel and Keegan Cyr had two singles and one RBI each.

Bangor (2-4) got all of the offense it would need in the first inning when its first three batters, Trisch (single), Neel (single) and Noah Missbrenner (bunt single) loaded the bases against EL starter Ben Cassidy.

After a pop out, Prouty took a 3-2 pitch for ball four to plate Trisch. Neel scored on Caleb Bois’ ground out to short for a 2-0 lead.

“Obviously, we’ve had some tough luck in the beginning of the season and we’ve been trying to play from behind,” said Bangor coach Dave Morris, whose team had scored eight runs through its first five games. “It was nice to have a pitcher have a lead.”

“That was a big momentum-changer right from the get-go,” Prouty said. “We had a lead right from the start and we never let go of it.”

Cyr’s two-out RBI single in the third made it 3-0 as Prouty set down the first 10 Eddies he faced.

With one out in the fourth, he finally allowed a base runner when he hit Christian Beliveau in the back with one out. Jake Arel reached when his ground ball went under the third baseman’s glove, but Prouty got out of the inning with a strikeout/caught stealing double play. Beliveau was initially ruled safe at third on the play, but the field umpire reversed the call when he saw that Beliveau’s slide came up a few inches short of the bag.

With one out in the fifth, Jack Keefe beat out an infield single on a grounder to short for EL’s first hit. Prouty surrendered two more singles to load the bases but got Nick Gagne to tap to second, where Cyr made a nice play to start a 4-6-3 double play and preserved the shutout.

“He definitely kept them off-balance,” Morris said. “I thought our catcher, Isaac Bushway, called a great game. Carson’s been throwing well all season long. He’s had a couple of tough losses. But I thought our defense played well behind him, particularly with the bases loaded. Our young second baseman turning that double play was a big play for us.”

“He commanded well today,” Edward Little coach Dave Jordan said of Prouty. “I thought we had some spots where we battled and we didn’t quite come up with the big hit when we needed to like we have so far this season.”

Prouty set the Eddies down in order in the sixth and seventh, striking out four of the final six hitters.

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