YOUNG SAINTS: Saratoga Catholic baseball finding early-season success
SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY » Normally when players get called up to varsity early, they’re a freshman or sophomore in high school. This season, Saratoga Catholic baseball coach Phonsey Lambert is testing out what some of his middle-schoolers can do.
And after the first week of the season, he’s impressed with what he’s seen.
“I looked at the guys at our inter-squad scrimmage and just said all those young kids can play, so we’re going to keep them all up,” Lambert said. “We have four eighth graders, a ninth grader and even a seventh grader and they’re all contributing.”
The freshman is Aidan Crowther. The four eighth graders are Hunter Fales, Charlie Greiner, Ronan Rowe, and Tyler Weygand and the seventh grader is Pierce Byrne.
“Honestly, not really,” Byrne said on if he thought he was going to be playing on varsity. “I started off the year on JV and they called me up before the game on Thursday
and they said that I earned my spot on the team and that I’m going to get an opportunity to show what I can do.”
You wouldn’t know that Byrne, a towering seventh grader, is that young unless you checked the roster.
“It’s good that there’s a few younger guy on the team, so we can do this together,” Byrne said, noting that he’s been working on a knuckle ball for this season. “It’s a good opportunity to be able to play with the older kids and I like where we’re at as a team, we’re going to be a really good this season.”
On Thursday against Chatham, he threw a scoreless sixth inning on twelve pitches, striking out one, in his varsity debut. He also went three-for-three as the Saints picked up the 9-3 win in their season opener.
Byrne went one-for-two, with a walk, on Saturday against Waterford.
Saturday was a true test for the new Saints. Against Waterford, all three pitchers to take the mound for the yellow and black were eighth graders. On top of their age, the weather didn’t make their jobs of getting outs any easier, as it was raining all afternoon.
“I thought they did fabulous. We threw three eighth graders today and that’s a pretty good baseball team over there,” Lambert said. “They battled, they bent, but they didn’t break. We almost had to bring in (Ryan) McCarroll at the end, but Charlie Greiner did a super job of closing the game out.”
Weygand got the start and went four innings, allowing one run one two hits, while striking out eight and walking five, as he picked up the win. Rowe came in next and worked a scoreless fifth inning, but struggled in the sixth. As the rain picked up, Rowe began to struggle with his command, hitting three straight Fordians. After Waterford cut their deficit from 7-1 to 7-4, Lambert called on Greiner to get out of the jam.
“We tried to get him through it and Coach Long and I were talking about it, but he didn’t didn’t have it. He was having trouble with the landing spot and just the conditions today weren’t helping. Rowe did a nice job in the fifth inning, but he needed some help getting out of the sixth,” Lambert said.
Waterford helped the Saints get out of the inning, when on a bases-loaded double with no outs, the runner from first blew past the third-base coach’s holding sign and attempted to score - he was out by over 40 feet at the plate. The next batter singled, which would have made it a onerun game.
“That was critical. They held him up but he still went” Lambert said. “Then the next guy got a hit, that was a huge moment in the game.”
After allowing a single, Greiner struck out the next two Waterford hitters to escape the sixth with a 7-5 lead. The Saints added one more in the bottom half, then Grainer added two more strikeouts in the top of the seventh to close out the game and earn the save in the 8-5 victory.
Saratoga Catholic was supposed to play a double-header on Saturday, the first game against Waterford and the second against Hoosic Valley, but the second was called minutes before first pitch due to the persistent rain and wet field conditions. It was rescheduled for next Thursday. Ryan McCarroll, a familiar face for the Saints, was supposed to be making his first start of the season.
Along with McCarroll, Saratoga Catholic has three other seniors including Chris Gill, Ben Hajos and Dylan Mulholland. They have two juniors, Anthony Barile and Mark Hmura, rounding out the roster.
Barile and Hajos led the Saints with the bats on Saturday, each collecting three hits, including a triple for Barile.
Before calling up five middle-schoolers to the varsity squad, Lambert was cautious of how the upperclassmen would react, knowing that this was the first year for most of them as well.
“We only had one guy on this team who’s had an at-bat on the varsity level coming into this season - and that’s Ryan McCarroll,” Lambert said, noting that McCarroll is the team’s ace. “First of all, the young guys had to get the respect from the older guys. I could have told them who’s going to be on the team, but some of these kids have had to wait until this year just to get their shot to play. For the upperclassmen, this is their first time playing varsity too.”
The Saint’s coach believes he’s has a good combination of younger and older players and it’s hard to argue with the results. They’re 2-0 to begin the season and they’re hoping to get better from here.
“The older guys weren’t sure at first and now they’ve accepted them as they see that they can play and are going to help us win ballgames. There’s no egos here, they’ve all bought in.”