ROME, Italy — The BBC Grosseto baseball club suffered a second consecutive shutout loss to Nettuno Baseball Club in the Italian Serie A Gold series, dropping Game 2 by a 6-0 margin on Sunday after falling 7-5 in Saturday’s opener. The results complete a disappointing weekend for the Tuscany-based squad, which entered the series hoping to rebound from a slow start to the 2024 season but instead saw its offensive struggles persist against one of the league’s most disciplined pitching staffs.
According to the official box score published by the Italian Baseball and Softball Federation (FIBS), Nettuno’s starting pitcher Enrico Tognotti delivered a dominant performance in Game 2, tossing seven scoreless innings with only three hits allowed and nine strikeouts. The right-hander, now 3-1 on the season with a 2.10 ERA, retired 17 of the first 18 batters he faced before a two-out walk in the eighth ended his bid for a complete-game shutout. Relief pitcher Alessandro Vignali closed out the ninth with a 1-2-3 inning to preserve the clean sheet.
“We executed our game plan perfectly,” Tognotti said in a postgame interview with FIBS.tv. “The key was staying ahead in the count and making them chase pitches outside the zone. When you do that against a lineup like BBC’s, fine things happen.”
BBC Grosseto, meanwhile, managed just five hits across the two games and left 10 runners on base. Their offense, which entered the series averaging 4.2 runs per game, failed to score more than two runs in any inning and struck out 18 times combined. Manager Marco Martellini acknowledged the team’s difficulties adjusting to Nettuno’s pitching approach after the game.
“We weren’t patient enough at the plate,” Martellini said. “They threw strikes early and made us swing at bad pitches. Credit to them — they pitched well — but we have to do better with runners in scoring position. That’s where we lost these games.”
The series loss drops BBC Grosseto to 4-6 in Serie A Gold play, placing them fifth in the six-team league standings. Nettuno, by contrast, improves to 7-3 and moves into second place, trailing only Parma Baseball Club in the standings. The top four teams at the end of the regular season will qualify for the postseason playoffs, which begin in late September.
Serie A Gold operates under a hybrid format this year, with teams playing a 20-game regular season followed by a playoff tournament to determine the Italian champion. The league, which features clubs from across Italy including historic franchises like Nettuno (founded 1945) and newer entrants such as BBC Grosseto (founded 2012), serves as the nation’s premier domestic baseball competition.
Nettuno’s home field, Stadio dei Pini in Nettuno, Lazio, has long been considered one of the most challenging venues for visiting teams in Italian baseball. Located approximately 60 kilometers south of Rome near the Tyrrhenian Sea, the ballpark’s dimensions — 325 feet down the lines and 400 feet to center field — combined with frequent offshore breezes, often suppress offensive production. Saturday’s game time was 3:00 p.m. Local time (13:00 UTC), with Sunday’s contest starting at 2:30 p.m. Local (12:30 UTC), both under partly cloudy skies and temperatures in the low 20s Celsius.
For BBC Grosseto, the immediate concern now turns to correcting offensive inconsistencies before their next series against Padova Baseball Club, scheduled for June 15–16 at Stadio Aldo Moro in Grosseto. Padova enters that matchup with a 5-5 record and has won three of its last five games, bolstered by strong performances from import players Daniel Rodriguez and Luis Santana.
“We need to get back to basics,” Martellini said. “Better at-bats, more contact, and putting the ball in play. We’ve got the talent — now we have to execute.”
As the Serie A Gold season progresses, both clubs will be monitoring player availability closely. BBC Grosseto reported no injuries from the Nettuno series, though utility player Lorenzo Bianchi was held out of Game 2 as a precaution after experiencing tightness in his right hamstring during Saturday’s contest. Nettuno, meanwhile, confirmed that starting catcher Matteo Ricciulli is available for upcoming games after recovering from a mild concussion sustained in late May.
The next official update on league standings and scheduling will come from FIBS following the conclusion of the June 14–16 weekend series, with full statistics and game summaries typically published within 24 hours of each contest’s completion.
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