Game # 7 South Plainfield 2 Colonia 0

South Plainfield baseball rallies to edge Colonia 2-0

Greg Tufaro, @GregTufaro 8:25 p.m. EDT April 13, 2015

WOODBRIDGE – After his team twice left the bases loaded, stranded a total of 10 runners and had two more erased at the plate in the first six innings, South Plainfield High School baseball coach Anthony Guida didn't need to consult a dictionary to express his sentiment.
"Frustration is the word," Guida said. "I told you before the game we just don't have timely hits."
 Fortunately for Guida, his Tigers were playing Colonia, another Greater Middlesex Conference White Division team similarly struggling to come through in the clutch.
The Patriots entered the contest having fanned 40 times and scored just seven runs in their five previous games, four of which were decided by a total of five runs.

The offensive ineptitude led to a thrilling pitchers' duel that ended when Tommy Dunn, who led off the top of the seventh with a triple, scored on a wild pitch and Jean Sapini plated a paramount insurance run with a two-out RBI single as the Tigers notched a 2-0 victory.
"I have a tremendous amount of confidence in this team," said Guida, whose incumbent league tournament finalist Tigers (4-3) climbed over .500 for the first time this season.
"We just haven't hit our stride right now. Defensively we are doing great, but, yeah, the frustration is there when seven innings we get guys on base and all seven innings we can't push one across. We've got to wait for a wild pitch to score and then we finally get a big hit to get a little breathing room."

Winning pitcher Vincent Pellegrino was the beneficiary of some solid infield defense as he induced the Patriots into 12 groundball outs, a result that actually pleased Colonia head coach Vinny Esposito, whose team struck out just three times.

"We did a better job of cutting down on the strikeouts," said Esposito, whose team whiffed a season-high 11 times while stranding 10 runners in a loss to J.F. Kennedy less than 24 hours earlier. "We put the ball in play better today. They played a good defensive game."
Colonia squandered plenty of its own scoring chances, stranding a total of five runners, three in scoring position.

With runners on the corners and two away in the second following Tyler Kovalewich's double and an infield error, Rocco Ferrentino was erased at first base when he intentionally broke early out of a first-and-third situation with the hope that he could remain in a rundown long enough for Kovalewich to steal home on the play.

The Patriots wasted No. 9 batter Eric Nielson's one-out double in the ensuing frame and squandered leadoff hitter Mike Parry's one-out single in the sixth.
In the bottom of the seventh, Pellegrino worked out of a one-out jam with runners on first and second following an infield single and a walk to preserve the victory, South Plainfield's fourth in its last five outings.

Centerfielder Jack Gillis made a brilliant over-the-shoulder catch on Ferrentino's deep fly for the second out of that inning. Two innings prior, right fielder Sean Erhardt erased Joe Sigona at second after he tried to stretch a single into a double.

With such stellar play behind him, Pellegrino did not need to do more than pitch to contact.
"I'm very proud of his outing today," Guida said. "He set them up offspeed early and just located his fastball. I think they swung the bat well. They did exactly what they were supposed to do – put the ball on the ground and hope we make mistakes. Our one mistake (second-inning error) didn't hurt us.

"Vinnie was throwing a 0-0 game into the seventh inning like he had a four-run lead. He had a lot of confidence. Nothing was really rattling him. He didn't try to overthrow. He just set guys up and pitched to contact."

The Patriots, who have scored just one run in Growney's three starts, did not let him down defensively, either.

Junior shortstop Mike Wilson, who Esposito believes is a Division I prospect, made a big-league play, throwing LJ Scarpitto out at the plate on a fifth-inning groundball on which the middle infielders, who were playing halfway with none away, were instructed to get the out at first.

"We told him prior to (the play) that the middle infield is going one, but he sees the guy break and makes a nice read," Esposito said. "That's a great play."

The Tigers went on to load the bases in that same inning only to have Dunn erased at the plate on a force at home off Chris Graves' swinging bunt for the second out. Growney then whiffed Sapini to work out of the jam.

Sapini, whose sacrifice bunt attempt resulted in a double play earlier in the game, exacted a measure of revenge in the seventh. Following a two-out intentional walk to Graves, he delivered a big insurance run with a clutch single.

"He's a hard-luck loser right now," Esposito said of Growney. "He's got to pitch a perfect game and that's really hard when you are not scoring at all. He's just got to keep pitching his game and we will score some runs someday.
"You've got to believe."

Staff writer Greg Tufaro: gtufaro@mycentraljersey.com


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