Powered by a Chris Trumpler 3-run HR, Northeast Prime 27 Scout won the 17U Super Top 25 crown.
By Rich Bevensee
After giving up four runs in the first inning but not really getting hit hard in the process, Derrick Nah knew two things to be true.
One, he had enough confidence in his own ability that he could keep the damage to a minimum for the rest of the game.
Two, he believed his Northeast Pride 27 Scout teammates would step up sooner or later with some offense to back his effort on the mound.
Turns out Nah was right on both counts. He pitched six shutout innings after that first-inning blip, and he received a huge offensive blow late in the game from a very unlikely source.
Leadoff hitter Chris Trumpler, who had not hit a home run since the spring for his high school team, blasted a long three-run shot in the bottom of the fifth inning to carry third-seeded Northeast Pride to a 6-4 victory over the fourth-seeded Garden State Naturals and the 17U Super Top 25 championship game on Wednesday evening at Diamond Nation in Flemington.
USA Prime 16U Northeast Stars defeated PA Rebels 2028 Regional, 9-2, in the 16U championship game and KBC Phillies SJ edged RCS Warpath Gold, 5-3, in the 15U final.
“Chris is a guy who’s gonna spray (the ball) all over the yard, but he ran into one there,” Pride coach Ryan Callahan said. “He’s got the juice when he connects.”
“At 5-9, 175 pounds, I’m not that guy at all,” Trumpler joked. “I guess I have juice but I really just try to put bat on ball and get on base. I was looking for a good pitch to hit and drive it somewhere. I got a nice little inside pitch and I turned on it.”
Northeast Pride (14-9-3), based in Beach Lake, Pa., went 4-0 in the Super Top 25 event, winning two pool games and knocking off PA Rebels 2027 National, 11-6, in the semifinals.
The Naturals (12-8-1), who train out of Scotch Plains, also went 2-0 in pool play and upset top-seeded Gothams Authentic 2027, 4-1, in the semis.
Nah, a rising 6-foot, 305-pound senior at Wilkes-Barre Area in Plains, Pa., earned the tournament’s Most Valuable Player award. After spotting the Naturals a 4-0 start, Nah was magnificent in his six final innings of work, giving up no runs while yielding two hits and a hit batsman and striking out six.
Northeast Pride trailed 4-0 going into the bottom of the fourth before scoring twice in the fourth and adding four runs in the fifth.
“I told the guys to just keep attacking, that’s all we can do,” Nah said. “We put up six runs late so I knew we had it in us. This team has been solid all year. We were down four runs in an earlier tournament here and we came back from that so just give our guys time.”
The comeback began in the fourth when Danny Luce and Noah Fetko both had a sacrifice fly to drive in runs and cut the Naturals’ 4-0 lead in half.
In the fifth, Gavin Lubomski and Luke Fisch, the team’s Nos. 10 and 11 hitters, stroked one-out singles to set the stage for Trumpler.
The lefty-hitting Trumpler came to the plate 0-for-2 but hammered an inside 0-1 pitch that seemed destined for the right field fence from the jump. Not that Trumpler saw it that way.
“I thought I hit it in the gap,” said Trumpler, a rising senior at John Jay Senior High in East Fishkill, N.Y. “I didn’t think I got all of it and I definitely didn’t think it was going out. I started out sprinting because I thought it was going off the wall.”
Three batters after Trumpler’s trip around the bases, Tristan Pagliettini added some insurance with a two-out RBI single.
The Naturals sent the tying run to the plate in the sixth and seventh innings, but went 0-for-5 against Nah with a runner aboard.
Nah’s performance made Callahan’s decision to leave his big righty in the game look genius. Using just his fastball and slider, Nah threw 101 pitches and actually gained velocity as the game progressed. In fact, Nah faced just two batters over the minimum in the last six innings.
“After the first inning I told the guys we need to get it back,” Nah said. “Make an error? Don’t hang your head, just get me a hit.”
Perhaps it’s the tenacity in Nah which fueled his persistence. That quality will serve him well this fall when he’s playing for the Wilkes-Barre varsity football team, for whom he’ll play both ways as an offensive guard and defensive tackle.
Derrick Nah pitched Northeast Prime to the 17U Super Top 25 title to earn MVP honors.
“We didn’t help him out in the first inning and we let up the four runs,” Callahan said. “After that he put up a zero on seven pitches (in the second inning), threw up a zero again (in the third) and continued to throw up zeroes. I kept talking to him after every inning and before he went back out and every time he said he felt good. So as long as he was putting up zeroes and giving up weak contact, I was going to him as long as we could.”
The timing of the championship was not lost on Northeast Prime, which closed out its summer season with a title and will be looking forward to picking up where it left off in the fall.
“It’s a really good sendoff for the boys,” Callahan said. “We still have the fall with this group, but it’s a good exclamation to end the summer. They’ve been putting it together all summer and continued to build. It’s a credit to the work they put in this summer and it’s nice that it all came together here.”
The Naturals sprung ahead with four runs in the first inning thanks to a few fluky plays. Leadoff hitter Walter Christian, an indoor track star at St. Joseph of Metuchen, used his speed to earn an infield single and steal second. Justin Mangano followed with a shot down the left field line which struck the third base bag and bounded into foul territory, allowing Christian to score.
Luke Jones walked and Hogan Boyd hit a sharp grounder which took an awkward hop in front of shortstop Pagliettini, giving Mangano time to score on the play for a 2-0 lead.
The righty-hitting Jared Volpe slapped a routine grounder to the right side where second baseman Danny Luce had vacated to cover second base, and that drove in Jones. With two out, Connor Hayeck hit a short roller which Pagliettini couldn’t make a play on and it allowed Volpe to score for a 4-0 Naturals lead.
For the Naturals, Christian pitched three innings and allowed two runs on three hits and three walks with two strikeouts. Jones threw 1⅔ innings and yielded four runs on four hits and one walk. Davis Murphy handled the final 1⅓ innings, striking out three while giving up one hit.