Coach Mike Herbst on Ryan Smerechniak’s outing and the offense in the 5-4 victory pic.twitter.com/72U10dsIo4
— Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) August 11, 2020
2020 took high school sports away from us, but thanks to the LI Boys of Summer, the class of 2020 was able to experience some semblance of closure to their varsity baseball careers.
The Suffolk Varsity Division was put together featuring seven high school teams in (mostly) their entirety. With all teams making the playoffs, it did somewhat mitigate the impact of the 9 game regular season but still seeding does usually have value.
Bay Shore flipped that narrative on its head by losing all eight of their regular season games before flipping a switch in the postseason and running the table in the three game playoff and defeating HDMH (Connetquot) by the score of 5-4 to become champs.
This game had a few twists-and-turns and wound up being an extremely intense battle that came right down to the final batter.
The Marauders sent Ithaca-commit Ryan Smerechniak to the hill on three days rest. Coach Herbst noted that he wanted the ball and would not want to come out of this game – jokingly saying that he would’ve gotten punched if he tried to take the ball from him.
HDMH got on the board immediately as leadoff batter Anthony Amato hit a soft popup to right field that was misplayed into a double by the right fielder. The throw got away and Amato was able to come all the way around to score a “little league home run” to open up the game so HDMH led 1-0.
Undeterred, Smerechniak was lights-out for the next several innings. The only issue is that his counterpart, freshman Anthony Scarabino was at his best as well. Through three innings, the score remained 1-0 but Smerechniak had seven strikeouts.
The game flipped in the top of the fourth when Scarabino struggled with his command.
Marauders take a 2-1 lead on a 2-R single by Ryan Smerechniak pic.twitter.com/HxdiTvFE04
— Axcess Baseball LI (@axcessbaseball) August 11, 2020
He walked Chris Rouleau to open up the inning and his Darnell Guerrero (nephew of Vladimir Guerrero) after him. That brought up Matt Rouleau. He dropped down a sacrifice bunt but the HDMH infield had a miscommunication which left first base unattended and allowed all three runners to reach safely. With the bases loaded and no outs, Smerechniak helped himself with a line drive two-run single into left center field to give Bay Shore a 2-1 lead. The ensuing batter, Brandon Soumakis roped a single as well, allowing a run to score, but the second run was gunned down at the plate. This kept the game close, 3-1, but more importantly got an out finally on the board. After back-to-back walks to the No. 8 and 9 hitters, Anthony Amato induced a 4-6-3 double play off the bat of Jason Ambos to end the inning and give HDMH a chance to battle back.
Smerechniak continued to dominate in the fourth and fifth innings, allowing no runs and finishing the fifth inning with his ninth strikeout of the game.
In the top of the sixth, HDMH turned to Albany-commit Alex Ungar to stop the bleeding. He did his job, working around a leadoff single by Matt Rouleau to strike out the next three batters.
The seventh inning is when the game ramped up its intensity a few notches. The Bay Shore offense knew they needed to add some insurance runs against Ungar. they used a disciplined approach against the hard-throwing righty. He walked Kevin Minaya and Jason Ambos to open up the inning and hit Ty Panariello square in the back with a fastball to load up the bases with no outs. Chris Rouleau hit a sacrifice fly to left field to extend the lead to 4-1 and a wild pitch scored Ambos to give them some breathing room at 5-1. After another hit batsman, he retired the next two batters to head to the bottom of the seventh.
Smerechniak went back out for the seventh and was clearly was bit fatigued as he allowed singles to Anthony Scarabino and Anthony Amato to start the inning. A tailor-made double play was botched at third base to load the bases with no outs to bring up the ever dangerous Matt Brown-Eiring. The Stony Brook commit hit into a fielder’s choice to bring in a run but get an out on the board. The following batter, Matt Tringali fanned for Smerechniak’s 11th of the afternoon. Ryan Appell made the game a bit closer with a well-struck two-run single to right field to make it 5-4. A HBP of Chris Hendrickson once again put the go-ahead run on base. Smerechniak reared back and fired and it was hit to short, which was converted into a force out to end the game.
So with the victory, Bay Shore captured the title and their third consecutive victory in the past two days.
