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Moon dominates Connellsville, 16-1

By Mike Ciarochi mciaroch@heraldstandard.Com 3 min read
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Connellsville's Corey Fogle gets a hit during the first inning of Sunday's game against Moon at Connellsville Area High School.

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Holly Tonini

Connellsville’s Corey Fogle chases a line drive hit by a Moon player during the first inning of Sunday’s game at Connellsville Area High School.

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Connellsville's Austin Puskar gets Moon's Marco DeBlassio out at first during Sunday's game at Connellsville Area High School.

CONNELLSVILLE — Neat, clean and impressive.

Then, there was Connellsville’s play in a 16-1 loss to Moon in the opening round of the Region 6 American Legion baseball tournament Sunday at Thomas E. Sankovich Field at Connellsville High School.

Moon manager Tyler George saw his team basically take advantage of Connellsville mistakes. There were only two errors, but Connellsville pitching allowed 10 walks, hit a batter and had six wild pitches.

“This is the worst we’ve looked in … five years,” Connellsville manager John Przybylinski said. “We just didn’t make the fundamental plays. Fundamentally, we were not there today.”

“You always like to do well, play well,” George said. “Nobody wants to win a regional game, 16-1, but we were sharp from the beginning. We’ve never played nine innings before, so we wanted to stay sharp the whole way. Our guys stepped up to the challenge today.”

Moon put seven runs on the board in the second inning and added three more in the third. They sent 11 batters to the plate in the second inning and got their seven runs on three hits, two Connellsville errors and three walks.

Connellsville starter and loser Trevor Farrell didn’t make it out of the second. He gave up three hits, seven runs, four earned, with three walks and three strike outs. Ty Henry relieved, but gave up three in the third and five more in the fifth, when he uncorked six wild pitches.

Connellsville scored in the bottom of the fifth, when Dakota McWilliams and John Blocker singled, Austin Puskar was hit by a pitch and Garrett Brooks drew a bases loaded walk, the only walk allowed by Moon pitching.

But McWilliams allowed a run in the sixth when Coal Koegel’s triple scored Marco DeBlassio.

“We did our homework on Connellsville,” George said. “They have played a lot of games and we knew they had some arms. The key for our team was pitch selection. When we hit a pitch, we did something with it.”

While Moon (16-5) takes on West Mifflin in the winner’s bracket at 4:30 p.m., Connellsville (37-9) plays Hopewell in a loser’s bracket game at 10 a.m. at Connellsville.

“We have a good team, we just didn’t show it today,” Przybylinski said. “We’ll come back tomorrow and play better. Give credit to Moon. They put the ball in play and good things happened for them.”

Blocker’s two hits were the only highlight for Connellsville, while Josh Bogats, DeBlassio and Koegel had two hits for Moon and Bogats and Koegel tripled.

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