Royal Palm Beach Holds Off Jupiter

Troy Hamilton went 2-for-5 with a couple of RBIs for the Wildcats.

After being rained out on Wednesday night, the Royal Palm Beach Wildcats traveled to Jupiter on Thursday and came away with a 10-6 win.

Following a scoreless first inning, both teams got in the swing of things in the second. In the top half, Nick Toney led off with a base-on-balls and his courtesy runner, Bailey Curtis, scored on an RBI by Nick Adams. Jupiter answered in the bottom half with an RBI triple by Andrew Martinez, and a run-scoring groundout by Sam Fockler.

Royal Palm hung three on the board in the fourth inning to take the lead. Nick Natterer lined an RBI double into right field and came home on a two-run single into center by Troy Hamilton.

After that, the Wildcats never looked back. They tallied four hits, including a triple by Sean Houck, three free passes and took advantage of a couple of Jupiter miscues to score six more in the fifth while bringing 12 batters to the plate.

“The kids seemed to have one good at-bat after another,” commented Royal Palm manager Thomas Coates. “We also caught a couple of breaks in that extended inning.”

Martinez, who went 3-for-3 for the Warriors, struck again in the sixth. He drilled a double into left field to score Mitchell Hartigan, kicking off a potential two-out rally. A two-run double by Noah Otero-Vargas three batters later kept things going for Jupiter, but Wildcat reliever Jacob Mercado induced an inning-ending line-out in the next at-bat to ultimately secure the victory.

After a slow start, the win improves Royal Palm to 3-5. They will look to make it three in a row when they face Wellington in a district game Friday night.

Jupiter falls to 2-4 with a Friday night district match-up against Palm Beach Central next up on the docket.

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