May has been an exciting time for the local college baseball teams. We’ve been treated to some great conference tournaments and this past weekend was no exception. The only downside–if any–is that high school coverage has had to take a back seat to events like the Skyline Conference tournament, ECC Tournament and the East Regional. This has limited my time covering the local high school teams but today begins a clean slate–the postseason. There will be no shortage of compelling match ups this week. Additionally, it doesn’t appear weather will be a major factor this week (knock on wood). Remember last year the terrible downpour that caused the games to be suspended on Tuesday and cancel all of Wednesday. We don’t need that.
I’m going to go over a few key points of interest and make a prediction that will hopefully not come back to bite me.
Most Compelling Match Up Today: William Floyd @ Sachem East
I will be at Sachem East to watch No. 6 Arrows host No. 11 William Floyd. You can throw away the rankings for a game like this, because it means nothing. If you watched their Opening Day match up on April 1 you saw two teams that are virtually identical. In fact, they finished with the same league (12-6) and overall record (13-7) so I’m not sure how they were seeded the way they were. We will likely see the sophomore stud Rafe Schlesinger against A.J. Verga. Schlesinger had a terrific season, going 4-1 and has garnered interest from a prominent ACC school along the way. Verga, a Molloy-commit, is one of the top left-handed pitchers on the island and has recently seen an uptick in velocity to the 85-87 MPH range from 82-83 last summer. When you factor in the offensive fire power for both teams this promises to be a great game.
The Arrows are led by Fordham-commit Don Wille, Stony Brook-commit Ryan Micheli. Jacksonville-commit Roman Dorosh, sophomore Ty Acker, Kevin & Sal Carricato and Andrew Oakland while Floyd features a powerhouse middle-of-the-order with Tommy & A.J. Verga along with East Tennessee-commit Nick LoMonaco.
This game will likely be decided by one run, as it was during Opening Day when Acker came through with the walk-off hit in the ninth. Floyd took the final two games of the series by the scores of 10-8 and 8-3 but that was almost two months ago now.
Sleeper Pick: North Babylon
This is a team that gets overlooked by everyone because they play in the same league as West Islip. In fact, their only three losses came to them back on April 23-25 and we covered the middle game. The Bulldogs finished at 16-3 and are led by the wildly-underrated Brian Primm. He is one of the top players in the class and draws rave reviews from all opponents. When he is pitching they are close to unbeatable, and when he is not pitching he is making an impact at first base and in the middle of the lineup. Coach Steve Corrado has done a great job, and perhaps the fact that they won Suffolk AA 10 years ago, means there is some magic in the air. With a deep pitching staff to go along with Primm (Evan Christopher, Nick Burke) along with a nice lineup (Christian Fils-Aime, Ross Tallarico, Brett Schulteisz) they have a chance to surprise a lot of people. Their biggest problem is that they are in the same bracket with West Islip of course.
X-Factor: Randall Alejo
We are all expecting West Islip to make a deep playoff run once again–as they always do. The only thing, in my opinion, that can potentially prevent that from happening would be a first-round upset by Pat-Med. While I’m not going to go as far as to predict this will happen, the match up is not great for a West Islip team that has not been swinging a hot bat. They do pitch tremendously well and play small ball, but Randall Alejo is the type of pitcher that can shutout any team and perhaps Coach Frascogna can pull some magic out of his hat the way he did two years ago when the No. 13 ranked Pat-Med Raiders took down No. 4 Hills East.
Match Up I am Hoping For: Smithtown East vs Connetquot
This could potentially happen next week if both teams win their respective brackets. This would be a No. 2 vs No. 3 match up at Smithtown East. I would love to see a lights-out pitching staff against the top offense on the island (in my opinion). It would really be a thrilling match up and I hope we see it. Ward Melville vs West Islip would be another great one, match up two of the most successful coaches and fundamentally sound teams.
Pick to Win it All: Connetquot
I am sticking with my pick. I’ve been saying this for a while that Connetquot is the most physically-talented team in the tournament. Whether or not that translates remains to be seen but I have to stick with my guns. The only thing that has changed since the beginning of the season is that they have more impact guys than I had thought. We all knew about Joe Savino, Alex Ungar, Matt Brown-Eiring and the Yalon twins, but we have also seen the emergence of players like Josh McGee (.509 AVG, 4 HR) and Matt Goodis (6 wins). They still have a dominant team and it just might be their time.
