Hopwood rallies past Charleroi to reach FCBL finals
Hopwood Village Plaza found itself in a familiar position Thursday in Game 2 of their Fayette County Baseball League first-round playoff game at Charleroi.
The Magicians pushed across three runs in the first inning, but Hopwood rallied to tie it and pulled out a 5-4 win in eight innings to sweep the best-of-three series and advance to the finals against Carmichaels.
Erik Streussnig pitched a complete game to earn the win for Hopwood.
Game 1 of the best-of-five finals is slated for 5 p.m. Sunday at Carmichaels.
Santino Marra scored what proved to be the winning run for Hopwood (12-6) in the top of the eighth inning when he was hit in the ankle by a pitch, advanced to second on Chad Petrush’s ground out, took third on a wild pitch and came home on Justin Brestensky’s infield single.
“We’ve been doing that quite a bit this year,” Hopwood manager Buddy Marra said of his team battling from behind to win. “We’ve kind of had to because we’ve gotten off to a lot of bad starts.”
Charleroi pushed across three runs in the first inning.
Colton Brightwell started the rally with a one-out single to center and Elias Lippincott reached on a pop fly single to left. Remington Lessman followed with a run-scoring single to right and Chad Behrendt hit into a force out that brought in another run for a 2-0 lead. Lorenzo Glasser’s RBI double scored Behrendt to make it 3-0.
“We had a few uncharacteristic mistakes, like an outfielder who can usually make a catch with his eyes closed overran a ball and we had a couple bobbles and other misplays here and there that cost us,” Buddy Marra said.
Hopwood got one run back in the second inning when Santino Marra singled, stole second, went to third on a passed ball and scored on Brestensky’s sacrifice fly to center.
The Magicians upped their lead back to three in the third inning. Behrendt reached on an error, went to second on Manny Stitch’s sacrifice bunt and took third on the same play on another error. Jimmy Lanzi’s single made it 4-1.
Hopwood got to Charleroi starting pitcher Josiah Fisher for three runs in the fifth inning to tie it.
Streussnig and Anthony Piasecki led off with singles and Wyatt Nehls brought in both runners when he blasted a double to left-center.
“Wyatt hit one that would’ve been out of any other park that we played in,” Buddy Marra said.
Santino Marra’s two-out infield single later in the inning tied it at 4-4.
“Their pitcher threw a lot of off-speed stuff and had us off-balance,” Buddy Marra said. “We had a hard time squaring anything up until about the third time through the lineup. Santino got a big two-out hit. That was the key inning for us.”
Fisher allowed three earned runs on nine hits with two walks and two strikeouts in six innings.
The score remained tied until Santino Marra’s run in the eighth off Lippeincott, who gave up just the one run on one hit and no walks with four strikeouts in two innings.
Streussnig, who threw 107 pitches, was charged with three earned runs on six hits with three walks and three strikeouts in tossing all eight frames.
“Both games were pitching duels for the most part,” said Buddy Marra, whose team won Game 1 at Hutchinson Field on Wednesday, 5-4. “Brestendky and Rik (Streussnig) both threw complete games. I was thinking about taking Rik out but he said he could finish so I stuck with him. He’s one of those guys who gets stronger and more accurate as the game goes on. I think he had 27 pitches in the first inning then later in the game he was getting them out with 10 or fewer pitches an inning.”
Santino Marra was 3 for 3 with an RBI and two runs scored, Nehls had two hits and two RBIs and Piasecki also had two hits for Hopwood.
Buddy Marra commended his team.
“We have a group of younger Connellsville players and they mix in great with our older players like Santino and Brestensky and Chad Petrush,” he said. “These boys don’t miss much. They want to play ball. Then we picked up (Tate) Musko. There are a few kids that I wasn’t sure I had room for who ended up being key players for us this year.”
Hopwood won’t have its full complement of players available for the finals, however.
“We had three or four starters on vacation for this series and then we’ll have three starters who won’t be able to play in the finals,” said Buddy Marra, whose team finished second in the regular season behind Carmichaels (14-3-1).
“Pitching is the name of the game when you get into a best-of-five series. Carmichaels is a good team. They hit, they’re steady on defense and with (Matt) Bamford and (Gianni) Cantini, those are both really good pitchers. I think we can hang with them with Brestensky and Streussnig but we’ll probably have to start patching it up after those two guys.”
Buddy Marra is hoping his team’s offense will pick it up in the finals.
“It just seems like we haven’t been hitting now like we were early in the season, so we have to play solid defense to hang with Carmichaels,” he said. “But I’m confident that we can win. Our team is scrappy. They don’t quit. It should be fun.”