By Steve Smull
LVBL News

LIMEPORT – Lehigh Valley Cardinals manager Ron Cahill summed up a very tough defeat Saturday night in a very positive, professional way.

“It was one helluva game,” said Cahill. “Here we are in the middle of a pandemic, playing baseball under the lights at Limeport Stadium. How can you beat that? It’s just great to be out here.”

His players will have to echo those sentiments and bounce back strong on Sunday when the series moves to Alpha for Game 2 and maybe Game 3, if necessary.

After seven scoreless innings, the #2 seeded Braves scored six runs in the top of the eighth, only to see the #3 seeded Cardinals answer with five two-out runs in the bottom of the eighth. Alpha (12-3) hung on for dear life to win this Lehigh Valley Baseball League (LVBL) Premier Division game over the Cardinals (10-4-1) by a score of 6-5.

It was a tale of two games.

The first seven innings were a classic pitcher’s duel that took exactly two hours. The pitch counts for both pitchers crept over 100 after the seventh inning. The last two innings took an hour, with the eighth inning taking 46 minutes.

The tale of the tape was interesting going into the eighth inning, too.

In the red corner, in the first-base dugout at Limeport Stadium, stood Steven De La Cruz for the Lehigh Valley Cardinals, the former pro pitcher from the St. Louis Cardinals organization. He struck out the first five batters he faced and 13 overall through seven shutout innings, allowing just two hits. Not one Braves runner reached third base. De La Cruz’s pitch count was 107 after seven innings.

In the white corner, in the third-base dugout at Limeport Stadium, stood Colton Langworthy, the Alpha workhorse of recent years who helped the Braves win the Premier Division championship in 2018. He struck out four batters in his first two innings, but it was all guts from there. The Cardinals had runners on first and second with no outs twice and also had the bases loaded with no outs once during the first seven innings, and Langworthy wriggled his way out of every jam. Langworthy’s pitch count was 103 after seven innings.

Both aces took vastly different paths to get to the eighth inning, but the bottom line showed brightly on the Howard “Lefty” Fegely scoreboard after seven innings.

0-0.

That would change quickly during a 46-minute, 97-pitch, 11-runs-(all unearned)-on-three-hits eighth inning. 

First, the top of the eighth, featuring the Braves.

Adam Buss led off with a walk as the strike zone tightened up a bit. After an E-2 on a squibber down the first-base line put runners on second and third. An E-3 then scored a pair of runs, and the Braves took a 2-0 lead. Zach Vegh got hit by a pitch to put runners on first and second, and an E-4 scored another run and put runners on second and third. There were still no outs, and Alpha led 3-0.

Exit De La Rosa, Enter Mike Santiago.

De La Rosa should have been out of the inning without a run scored. He induced three fairly easy outs that went for errors. Santiago struggled a bit, too. He walked the first batter he faced on seven pitches to load the bases. Gary Carmona lifted a sacrifice fly to right field, and all three runners advanced 90 feet as the throw went home. The Braves led 4-0. Collin O’Connor got hit by a pitch to reload the bases, and Chris George followed with an RBI walk, and Alpha led 5-0. After a strikeout, Buss got his second walk of the inning, this one producing an RBI, and the Braves led 6-0. A 3-1 putout four pitches later ended the nightmare inning for the Cardinals.

The damaging tally consisted of four walks, three errors, two hit batters, and 60 pitches thrown during the 30-minute top of the eighth. Notice there were no hits. Six runs on no hits. 

That devastating inning sucked the air right out of the Cardinals fans. The game was over in the minds of any and every fan in the bleachers. 

After a pop-up to second started the bottom of the eighth, Santiago worked a six-pitch walk. Then Alpha catcher Rick Vegh made an excellent play on a foul ball for the second out. Up came the #10 batter for the Cardinals. Even the most hopeful Cardinals fan had given up at this point. In fact, about half of their loyal fans had left, and even several Braves fans headed for the exits figuring their 6-0 lead was more than safe with just four outs to go in the game.

Not so fast, Kemosabe. That is why you play the game until the final out.

Now for the rest of the bottom of the eighth inning, featuring the Cardinals.

De La Cruz hit a chopper just over the pitcher’s head that could have gone for an infield hit but was ruled an error. Nick Gattuso followed with a single to load the bases. Jose Berrios got hit by a pitch for an RBI that trimmed the Braves lead to 6-1. Matt Rosace worked a six-pitch walk to make it 6-2. Blake Fontaine then singled in two runs, and suddenly the Cardinals trailed 6-4 with runners on second and third. Isaac Jimenez singled up the middle, but the Braves kept the ball from reaching the outfield behind second base so only one run could score. The Cardinals now trailed 6-5 with runners on the corners. However, Langworthy would induce a 6-4 putout on his 37th pitch of the inning to end the frame. The Alpha faithful in the crowd now breathed a sigh of relief.

With all of the fireworks of the eighth inning, the ninth inning was quieter than a church mouse. Santiago hit Dylan Sapir to start the top of the ninth, but a pop-up and two strikeouts ended that inning. Langworthy took the mound in the bottom of the ninth with a pitch count of 140. However, he would only need ten pitches to have his first 1-2-3 inning since the bottom of the first.

“Colton is a warrior,” said player/manager Zach Vegh after the win, referring to his ace. “We were debating whether to throw him tonight or possibly throw him two games on Sunday as he did two years ago to win a championship. But he really wanted the ball tonight. So I gave him the ball, and he shoved tonight. We had one inning of bad defense behind him, and it almost cost us the game. But in the ninth inning, when we needed him to be at his best, he was, and he shut the door.”

“This was a well-pitched game by two very good pitchers,” continued Vegh. “Two of the best pitchers in the league. We finally got some runners on in the eighth inning, and then their pitchers got wild. We took advantage of that situation and had a big inning.”

After that shocking top of the eighth, the Cardinals deserve a lot of credit for answering that Braves rally. They scored five runs, and all of those runs scored with two outs.

Alpha recorded just two hits in this game compared to ten hits for the Cardinals. Berrios and Fontaine both had more hits than the Braves Saturday night. Berrios was 3-for-4 with a double, and Fontaine was 3-for-5. Jimenez was 2-for-4 for the Cardinals.

Two stories ran concurrently during this game for the Cardinals.

“One story for this game for the Cardinals is that we just could not move runners effectively tonight,” said manager Ron Cahill. “We left a ton of runners on base.”

The Cards stranded 13 runners, and that, and their eighth-inning errors, cost them the game.

“The other story is that De La Cruz was phenomenal tonight,” added Cahill. “That is the most pitches he has thrown all year, and he was dominant all night. The errors in the eighth inning did us in. We have one bad inning every game. But ultimately, the Braves deserved to win tonight.”