The plague of one-run losses has stuck with the waves throughout their opening road stretch of 2024, the latest stop occurring in a 5-4 defeat to the North Shore Navigators on Thursday night.

In the bottom of the eighth inning, North Shore’s Luke Orfi knocked a single into shallow right field, sending a bouncing ball into the hands of Eric Genther. A following crow hop from the right fielder shot a cannon of a throw blistering towards home. 

As a two-hop ball bounced into the glove of Aaron Posey at home, North Shore’s Patrick D’Amico slid across the plate, with his left hand just beating the throw by a fraction of a second, scoring the winning run, making the game 5-4.

Although the two-RBI single from Orfi gave the Navs their final lead of the night, it was not their first lead. North Shore led through the first six innings of the coastal division matchup, getting up to a 3-0 advantage before the Waves’ bats came up in the seventh.

A chaotic, action-filled half inning saw four Waves come home to score, headlined by a two-RBI ground rule double from Posey, bringing in Harrison Wilson and Eric Fernandez, that was mere feet from going into the scorebook as a grand slam.

Two errors in the field from the Navigators allowed for the rest of the action in the inning, resulting in the first Ocean State lead of the ballgame 4-3.

The original runs scored by North Shore debuted in the third inning when stellar base running from Orfi saw him take second, third and home by stolen base, with the final straw being partially pulled by a double steal at second base.\

Two more runs were popped onto the scoreboard in right-center field in the bottom of the fifth inning when Reece Moroney drove in Alexander Luccini with a single and a fielder’s choice off the bat of Ryan Gerety brought in Orfi.

The Waves dropped to 2-4 with the result and have now concluded their marathon of a road stretch to open up 2024. They return to the Ocean State for a three-game weekend homestretch beginning with a rematch against Danbury on Friday night at 6:30 p.m. from Old Mountain Field.