Brennan leads H-T in playoff opener
“I was just blowing by them with my fastball. I didn’t really need to throw anything off-speed or changeup -- just blowing by my fastball. ” – Sean Brennan, Hatfield-Towamencin pitcher.
HATFIELD TWP. » The Bux-Mont American Legion first-round playoff game between Hatfield Tow am enc in and Plum ste ad didn’t exactly go as planned. Pregame rain delayed the start by 30 minutes and a downpour between the second and third innings caused another lengthy stoppage.
Neither delay affected Titans pitcher Sean Brennan. The right-hander threw six scoreless innings as No. 3 Hatfield-Towamencin advanced past No. 6 Plumstead, 4-0, Thursday night at School Road Park.
The Titans will face No. 2 Perkiomen in the winners bracket Saturday.
Brennan allowed one hit in the first two innings before the rain delay and four hits over his four innings after the rain delay. He struck out eight batters to one walk.
“I was just blowing by them with my fastball,” Brennan, a recent North Penn grad who’s continuing his baseball career at Washington College, said. “I didn’t really need to throw anything off-speed or changeup — just blowing by my fastball. I was really locating inside-out, up-and-down, everywhere.”
The most trouble Brennan faced came in the third inning immediately after the rain delay. He surrendered back-toback one-out singles and an error put runners on second and third. On a wild pitch, catcher Colin Orndorff raced to the
loose ball and Brennan beat the base runner to the plate for the second out of the inning. He struck out the final batter to strand a Plumstead runner on third and end the threat.
Third baseman Nick Koch made the defensive highlights of the night. On back-to-back plays in the top of the fifth inning, Koch made plays that got his teammates on their feet singing the Sports Center theme song.
On the first play, Koch avoided a broken bat and bare-handed a slow roller to get the out at first. He followed that by backhanding a grounder on the foul line and throwing across his body to first. He made another difficult play to record the first out in the seventh inning.
“Nicky at third making all those crazy plays,” Brennan said, “it was great. Those plays were getting us all hyped.”
Jadon Dormer pitched the seventh inning to close out the win for H-T.
The Titans offense didn’t need to do too much to secure this win and took advantage of Plumstead’s mistakes.
Quinn Marett led off the bottom of the first inning with a walk, beat the ball to second when he was picked off and went to third and scored on two wild pitches.
Jack Picozzi followed Marrett with a walk and advanced to second and third on two wild pitches. He scored on a Paul Moretski infield single to make it 2-0 in the bottom of the first inning.
In the fifth inning, Marett was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded to score Zach Riddle and Picozzi worked a bases-loaded walk to bring home Koch for a 4-0 lead.
“With the first pitcher there were a lot of passed balls,” Brennan, who went 1-for-1 with a walk and hitby-pitch, said. “We were just waiting for strikes at that point. The second pitcher we were just sitting on fastballs and taking them.”