Saratoga goes up against Burnt Hills in high school baseball action.
Even with playoff seed locked up, BH-BL plays strong in 8-5 win over Saratoga
BURNT HILLS — The Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake Spartans entered the 2012 baseball postseason as a No. 9 seed , which left players with mixed emotions. Though happy their season was not over, they lamented that they might have gotten a better firstround match- up if they had won more regularseason games.
With a playoff spot already locked up this year, the Spartans are not taking their feet off the accelerator. They raced out to a commanding 6-0 lead in the second inning on Tuesday afternoon and weathered a late rally to defeat the Saratoga Blue Streaks 8-5, a result that heavily influences the playoff fortunes of both Suburban Council schools.
“Coach is always talk- ing about getting ahead and putting a team away early,” said first baseman Dan Maynard, one of three Spartans with twoRBI performances at the plate. “We got their starting pitcher out … that inning. He was throwing pretty good. It was really key that we got him out early and put a lot of runs on the board.”
One of the main reasons for that is because Burnt Hills- Ballston Lake, a Class A school, qualifies for the Section II playoffs based on a point system.
They amassed enough points to clinch a postseason berth last week, but earned two additional points for beating Saratoga, a AA school. They now have 12, and more points means a better seed.
“If we want to be talked about as one of the better teams in the Suburban Council, we have to continue to play well and win,” Burnt Hills-Ballston
coach Rob Lake said.
The win pushed the Spartans’ record to 10- 5, and their Suburban Council mark to 7- 5. By doing that, they matched their league win total from 2012, when they went 7- 9, and did it in four fewer games.
“We thought we did a good job (last season). We were about .500,” Spartans pitcher Dan Nuzzi said. “Obviously, we have to do better if we want a better seed. We don’t want to be put on the bubble. We want to get the best seed that we can so we can get easier teams to play against in the playoffs. Every game is important.”
Nuzzi illustrated that when he stepped to the mound and delivered five dominant innings, retiring 15 of 17 Saratoga batters after he allowed the first two to reach base.
“Hitting the spots, that was important,” he said. “( Catcher Tom Moore) called a great game. Changing up speeds, that was important.”
The Spartans sent 10 batters to the plate in the second inning, highlighted by two-RBI hits from Maynard (single) and Robbie Knightes ( double). Cody Mooney and Josh Quesada also drove in runs.
They tacked on two more in the fifth inning, when Nuzzi tripled and
Duell Ryan McDonnell brought him home. McDonnell later scored on a Mooney double.
Nuzzi did not encounter trouble until the sixth inning, when his pitch count climbed and Saratoga coach Dean Bailey made wholesale line- up substitutions.
The coach
removed from the game five players who had gone a combined 0- for- 8 with two walks in their 10 plate appearances and sent out five pinch hitters.
Seven of the 10 Blue Streaks safely reached base in that inning, and Jack Herman, Alex Chandler and Kris Muller all scored when Jordan Pre- hoda wound up at third after an error on a wouldbe single.
Joey Butler came on in relief and the Blue Streaks stranded the tying run at the plate in both the sixth and seventh innings.
It was the fifth straight loss for Saratoga, which fell to 6-10 overall and 3-9 in the Suburban Council with four games remaining.
With no point system in AA and the other benchmark for an automatic playoff berth, a .500 league record, out of the question, they now must appeal to the playoff organizers to secure a postseason berth.
Asked if he was planning to make such a petition after the season, Bailey said he was not thinking that far in advance.
“The only thing that we’re going to focus on is Thursday at Shenendehowa,” he said. “We can’t worry about anything else in terms of what may happen or what will happen in the future. We have to control our destiny in terms of how we play the last four games.”