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Winter Garden, Fla. - A late game comeback effort was stopped in its tracks. The Winter Garden Squeeze begins its season with three consecutive losses to the Orlando Snappers, this time in a 9-5 defeat at home at Horizon High School on Sunday. 

 

It appeared as though the game was heading towards a similar result to Friday, May 30th’s 8-0 run rule. The Snappers did not waste any time getting their bats going, as Mathew Farner (Northwest Florida State) and Hayden Gustavson (State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota) each recorded hits in the first inning. Mario Trivella (State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota) then got an extra base hit to bring them home to score.

 

The Squeeze did not have an answer for the red-hot bat of shortstop Mathew Farner. He put up a monster stat line, going 4-5 with 4 hits, 2 RBIs and scoring twice as well.

 

Orlando continued to push the pace early in the contest, scoring twice again in the second inning and capping it off with a huge four run outing in the third to widen the gap to eight.

 

Winter Garden would finally get itself on the board, with a run in the home half of the third and fifth innings, respectively. Despite another score in the top of the sixth by Orlando, the Squeeze narrowed the scoring margin in that same inning, getting three runs in to make the score 9-5 in favor of the visitors.

 

Javier Calzadilla (North Florida) put together a solid performance for the hosts, going 2-5 with 2 hits and 2 RBIs in the loss.

 

“You know, I just got my swing off,” said Calzadilla. “And that’s the most important thing. You just have to keep doing what I’m doing.”

 

The scoring ended after the Squeeze’s big sixth inning, with neither team advancing any baserunners to home plate for the rest of the evening. There were multiple times throughout the game Winter Garden put runners on the base paths, but could not take advantage of these opportunities.

 

“[Capitalizing] is everything,” Calzadilla said about failed conversions in the game. “If we don’t execute, then we can’t win and we just have to get those bats hot and we’ll get rolling.”

 

Despite the shaky 0-3 start to the Squeeze’s 2025 campaign, Calzadilla knows there is still a lot of season to play and momentum to rebuild.

 

“You know, we have to play as a team,” Calzadilla said. “And get those runs in. You know, that’s the name of the game. You have to get those runs in, you have to hit and make those plays behind the pitcher.”

 

The Squeeze will travel to Leesburg tomorrow as they search for their first victory of the season in the first of a back-to-back against the Lightning on June 2 at 7 p.m.

 

Rickie Potts II (Syracuse University)