SALAMANCA — With no clock to be found on a baseball field, a game cannot be considered over until the losing team registers its last out.
Unfortunately for the Salamanca baseball team, that last out proved far too elusive on Monday. The Warriors led from the first inning on and took a 3-0 lead into the seventh in a Section 6 Class C first-round playoff game, but visiting Barker staged a desperate rally after being quiet most of the night. A five-inning seventh helped the Raiders stun the Warriors, holding on after one run in the bottom of the inning, 5-4.
Warriors pitcher Shawn Bacelli had allowed just two hits — and picked off one of them — and no walks through six innings. But he ran into trouble in the seventh, as Barker put the first two runners on base. After two walks and a hit batter, he exited with Salamanca clinging to a 3-2 lead and two outs. With Jaxson Ross on in relief, Jaret Black hit a line drive for a hit, but a two-base throwing error helped the Raiders ultimately clear the bases for a 5-3 Barker lead.
“I’ve been involved in a lot of games, it was very unique,” Salamanca coach Greg Herrick said. “First of all, very efficient game pitched by both starters. I think at one point I looked and it was just over an hour to play six full innings. That’s unusual. Defense was fantastic the whole game and then it let us down in the seventh with a costly error that allowed them to score the go-ahead runs, which was disappointing.”
Aidan Voss went 2-for-3 for Barker (No. 11, 8-11) and pitched a complete game, striking out eight with no walks, scattering five Warrior hits.
Ross hit a triple and scored two runs. Bacelli doubled and drove in two runs for the Warriors (No. 6, 12-8). Bacelli struck out five and walked two.
“I think our guy, Shawn, threw to one batter over the minimum through five innings,” Herrick said. “Couldn’t have asked for anything more there. But I think both pitchers did a great job of limiting traffic.
“It’s hard to think back we had two outs with the bottom of their order up and we just had a really bad sequence, we hit the No. 7 batter and walked No. 8 and No. 9 with the game on the line. But that’s the game of baseball, you’ve got 21 outs, you’ve got to get each and every one of them and we just didn’t finish tonight. Very disappointing but I’m proud of what the kids accomplished for them to play well enough to have a home (playoff) game at Vets; that hasn’t happened in a long time for the Salamanca program. I think they took a step in the right direction but we had bigger goals than that.”
Salamanca finished a second straight winning season, but again found itself seeking a playoff win. The Warriors had five seniors along with a strong core of freshmen and sophomores.
“For one thing I told them they have to capture the spirit and the leadership of our five seniors,” Herrick said. “Those guys have been tremendous ambassadors for our program, they’ve built it from next to nothing. We were to the point where we had to merge with another school.
“They had four years of varsity, a lot of those guys, and they built it from the ground up. They have a lot to be proud of but in doing that they displayed tremendous character, leadership and they had a passion about doing things the right way, so my hope is being around those guys that will carry forward. If we’re going to be a successful program, they have to carry their spirit and their work ethic forward. We couldn’t ask for better examples to learn from.”
Looking ahead, Herrick referenced his preseason comments about building from the inside out, with pitching and catching.
“I didn’t think we got to the point we needed to with the pitching depth,” he said. “It was just coming around, but we had some really nice surprises in that area but we have to work hard in the offseason to develop good pitching depth and solid catching and then we’ll build from the middle out.”
But he had nothing but praise for Bacelli, a senior who pitched on the varsity level for the first time this year after being primarily a catcher.
“He was tremendous for us this year,” Herrick said. “He hadn’t pitched the last couple years. He was successful pitching for me in Little League, so I wanted to rekindle that a little bit. We just kind of threw him into it and we don’t have nearly the season we did without him. He led our team in innings pitched, had really good stats across the board, he was exactly what I was looking for, a guy that pounded the strike zone and let the defense go to work.
“It was just a real nice surprise for us, to the point where it allowed Jaxon Tarr to move into the catching spot and he developed nicely as the year went on too.”
AT SALAMANCA
R H E
Barker 000 000 5 — 5 4 2
Salamanca 200 100 1 — 4 5 1
Aidan Voss (8 SO, 0 BB) and Noah Sandolfini
Shawn Bacelli (5 SO, 2 BB), Jaxson Ross (7) (1 SO) and Jaxon Tarr
