Fayette County League baseball
Connellsville throws BB’s against Uniontown There is an old expression about pitchers “throwing BB’s,” in reference to their velocity on the mound, but Connellsville actually did throw “BB’s” at Uniontown to win this one.
Andy Beucher went eight innings and Brandon Bryner worked the ninth as Connellsville defeated Uniontown 8-3, in Fayette County American Legion Baseball play at Hutchinson Field Friday.
The win left Connellsville 9-2 in division play to Uniontown’s 9-4.
Beucher gave up six hits and one run in his eight innings with manager Kevin Henry noting, “When you have Andy on the mound you have a strong pitcher, but at the same time you are taking him off his normal strong position of shortstop. However, he has asked to pitch, so we will move the two positions accordingly.”
Henry added, “Uniontown was shorthanded today, with some of its regulars going on vacation, but we still had a bit of trouble. We still are not doing some of the fundamentals the way we should be and we have to correct that. There were times today we didn’t move runners ahead and you have to do that to win games. You have to do the fundamentals to be a consistent winner.”
Uniontown manager Ron Popovich noted, “We had only two regular starters in the lineup today, with the others away. But at the same time it also gave us the chance to see what some of our younger players can do.”
Pitcher Josh Guittap was tough through the first five innings, but Connellsville got to him over the last four, collecting eight of its hits and three runs in that span. And he did not walk a batter over the entire nine innings.
Popovich added, “I am very pleased with Josh’s effort. He was throwing some sort of forkball and it kept them off balance a little bit. If there had been a stronger defense behind Josh (five errors) who knows what might have happened the way he was pitching.”
For Connellsville, Tony Marciante had a double, Brad Livingston and Eric Luckey had three singles each and Beucher chipped in two.
For Uniontown, Justin Luckey had a triple, D.J. Yonash added a double, and Guittap, Brennan Dayton and Ryan Gondek all chipped in two singles.
Connellsville led 3-0 in the second on Luckey, Livingston and Tyler Leonard singles, sandwiched with an error. It was 4-0 in the third on Marciante’s double, a wild pitch and Luckey’s fly ball.
Uniontown got on the board in the third after Mike Ostrosky was safe on an error, and moved around on Luckey’s bunt and Dayton’s single. Connellsville offset that in the fourth, and that was all the scoring until the ninth.
Connellsville got three runs in the ninth on an error, Bryner, Luckey and Livingston singles, and fly balls by Jon Stutzman and Matt Rupp. Uniontown came right back with two of its own on a walk to Ostrosky, Luckey’s triple up the right-center alley and Guittap’s single.
Connellsville plays at 5 p.m. today at Charleroi and is at home Monday in a 4 p.m. twinbill with Carmichaels. Uniontown is at Waynesburg Monday, home to Charleroi Wednesday and at California Friday.