close

Carmichaels, Little Joeys Pizza hope to play Game 3 Sunday

By Jonathan Guth jguth@heraldstandard.Com 5 min read

Game 3 of the Fayette County Baseball League semifinal playoff series between Carmichaels and Little Joeys Pizza was rained out on Thursday and Friday.

The two teams hope to finish the series Sunday at Carmichaels High School. The first pitch is scheduled for 6 p.m. The winner plays Mill Run (13-9), which swept Mitch’s Bail Bonds in the other semifinal series.

“This has kind of turned into a long series,” Carmichaels manager Dickie Krause said. “Sunday will be the fifth night I have prepared a field to play. I have never seen water like I saw today on our field, and I have been doing this for 30 years.”

The first game of the finals will be at Carmichaels if the Copperheads are victorious, or it will be at Mill Run Park if Little Joeys Pizza wins.

The Copperheads (18-3) entered the playoffs as the No. 1 seed and earned an 8-1 victory in Game 1.

Little Joeys Pizza (7-14-1) had to win a play-in game over Better Edge just to get in the playoffs, but came back for a 5-3 victory in Game 2, as Uniontown High School head baseball coach Ken Musko hit a three-run home run for LJP.

“I wasn’t happy after Game 2,” Krause said. “We’ve had great pitching and solid defense but we haven’t hit consistently. We have had some good games but we have had a lot of games where we had six hits or fewer and that can’t happen, especially in the playoffs. Game 1 was a lot closer than the score indicates.”

Little Joeys Pizza is managed by Tyler Spohn, and features a mix of young players and FCBL veterans that include Musko and Jim Cales.

“I had the same situation as our younger guys when I was coming up in the county league,” Spohn said. “I played with guys like Brian Sankovich, Jason Greene and Kenny (Musko). They helped me out and I try to help out our young guys, too. We try to help each other out.

“We are a first-year team and it would be great to get to the finals, but we have a huge challenge in front of us. They will probably throw Hunter Robinson, who is 3-0 against us, including a win in Game 1 of this series. The one thing that I think works in our favor is that we have seen him so many times and know what to expect, but we have to be able to get the offense going against him.”

Carmichaels is the defending champions and has a history of success in the FCBL, but Krause has stressed to his players that Little Joeys Pizza will be ready to go Sunday night.

“We come into this series with a target on our backs,” Krause said. “We have to be ready to go because everybody has their best team on the field at this time and will be ready to play. We can’t afford to play like we did in Game 2 or we will not be playing in the finals.”

FCBL Regular Season Awards

Carmichaels won the Tom Sankovich FCBL Regular Season Champion award at 17-2. Its two losses were to Mitch’s Bail Bonds, which finished at 15-4-1.

The Copperheads captured three individual honors with Hunter Robinson grabbing the Joe Kurnot Top Pitcher award, and Joe Havrilak winning the Alex “Pickhandle” Merkosky HR Leader and the John “Preacher” Collingwood RBI Leader awards.

Robinson was 7-1 and recorded 63 strikeouts in 46.2 innings pitched.

Mitch’s Bail Bonds’ Brian Fisher (4-1, 35ip), Mill Run’s Jimmy Malone (3-1, 28.1ip), the Mermen’s Josiah Fisher (3-1, 28ip) and Carmichaels’ Ryan Minteer (3-1, 28ip) rounded out the top five in pitching victories.

Malone (40), Better Edge’s Bob Finn (39), the Millers’ Trevor Farrell (37) and Minteer (34) were among the top five in the strikeout category.

Havrilak hit five home runs and knocked in 15 runs while batting .391, which was good enough for fifth in the league.

Mitch’s Bail Bonds’ Aaron Previsky had three home runs, while the Copperheads’ Joby Lapkowicz and the Mermen’s Louden Conte hit two.

Finn, Cales, Mill Run’s Dakota McWilliams, Carmichaels’ Eric Holt, and Mitch’s Josh Brammell and Roberto Kusinsky each had one homer.

Holt was second in the league in RBIs with 14, while Brammell and the Mermen’s Nate Luketich had 11. Spohn was fifth with 10 runs knocked in.

Mill Run’s Kris Firestone earned the John Kupets Batting Average Champion award with a .567 average in 15 games. He was also third in the RBI category with 13.

Mitch’s Bail Bonds’ Adam Jacko was second with a .452 batting average in 14 contests. Finn (.450, 13 games), Holt and Brammell (.441, 11 games) tied for the fourth spot, and Havrilak was fifth in batting average.

Conte (.381, 10 games) was sixth, Robinson (.367) seventh and Spohn (.366) eighth.

The Copperheads’ Caleb Dempsey (.355), Lapkowicz (.349) and the Mermen’s Jack Oberdorf (.349) rounded out the top 10.

CUSTOMER LOGIN

If you have an account and are registered for online access, sign in with your email address and password below.

NEW CUSTOMERS/UNREGISTERED ACCOUNTS

Never been a subscriber and want to subscribe, click the Subscribe button below.

Starting at $4.79/week.

Subscribe Today