Mother nature has forced the ECC decision-makers to push back the championship between Molloy-LIU Post to Sunday, May 14 at 10 am.
The teams have taken different routes to get to this point. LIU cruised past the University of Bridgeport, 7-1, on Thursday and edged St. Thomas Aquinas, 1-0, yesterday afternoon. They’ve used dominant pitching by Jake DeCarli and Noah Lorenzo with just enough offense. On Thursday, it was Kenny Daley‘s two-run single that was the difference-maker and yesterday it was Anthony Vaglica‘s RBI single late in the game to break the ice. They’ve used a total of three pitchers to get their two victories.
Molloy was defeated, 6-1, on Thursday by No. 1 St. Thomas Aquinas. They had a difficult road to take if they wanted to bounce back from that. To their credit, they’ve done just that. They defeated the University of Bridgeport, 6-4, yesterday morning before advancing to face St. Thomas Aquinas and defeating them by the same 6-4 score.
Anthony Catinella fired a complete game in the first game, and Bobby Kelly fired eight innings in the second game.
Being that Molloy enters with a loss in the tournament, they must defeat LIU Post twice to capture the ECC title, while LIU will only need to win once. Both coaches will have to make a decision as to how they will set up their pitching for this do-or-die situation.
In my opinion, Coach Mike Gaffney will go with sophomore James Varela. The Division ’15 grad is cut from the same cloth as DeCarli. He has pitched in several high-pressure situations before and will not be overwhelmed. He was third-team All-State for Division in 2015. He enters the day with a 3-5 record, 3.94 ERA over 61.2 IP, including 2 CGs.
Brian Kavanagh is another option, though I suspect he would be the obvious choice to start the elimination game. He started four games this season, compiling a record of 3-0 with a 4.71 ERA over 21.0 IP.
Molloy will most likely use their No. 4 starter Dominic Danetti. He started nine games this season, compiling a record of 2-6 with a 5.86 ERA, though he did have a six inning outing against Post earlier in the year, in which he allowed only one ER.
When it comes to the offenses, both teams have an identical .270 team AVG. LIU Post has a slight edge in OBP (.353 to .348) and SLG (.372 to .358). They also have a slight advantage in FLD percentage (.967 to .966), but you can throw that away in a single-game format.
These teams are very evenly matched, but it is much more difficult to expect a team to win both games in a day. For that reason, I believe Post will advance thanks to a strong outing by Varela and a three-inning save by ace-closer Dan Jagiello.
Additionally, LIU Post’s winning percentage of .617 is well ahead of Molloy’s .429. In fact, on March 25, Molloy entered the day at 3-13 and appeared headed towards a lost season. Ace Ron Bauer took the hill against Queens College, and fired seven strong innings to get their season back on track.
That’s what aces are for. Speaking of Bauer, don’t be surprised if he is available to come out of the ‘pen on short rest after Thursday’s start.
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