By Rich Bevensee
Iron Nine Baseball South 15U coach Max Reyes was faced with making some key moves in the late innings of the Halloween Mash championship game, but none were as pivotal as when he brought in the team’s lightning rod, Jacob Minnefor, to pitch in the top of the seventh inning.
Iron Nine had watched its five-run lead evaporate in the seventh and Reyes called on the always-vocal Minnefor to get the final out of the inning with the bases loaded.
Minnefor came through, and when Iron Nine failed to close the deal in the bottom of the seventh, Reyes sent Minnefor back out for the eighth inning. According to Diamond Nation’s tiebreaker rules, extra innings start with the bases loaded and one out.
With no room for error, Minnefor was the man for the job – he got two strikeouts to escape danger – and it’s a big reason why he was selected as the tournament’s Most Valuable Player after the Iron Nine sewed up the 15U title following a wild 6-5 victory over Power Pitching & Hitting Mafia 14U Blue on Sunday at the Nation in Flemington.
“I was ready for the moment,” Minnefor said. “In that situation I gotta think I’m the best pitcher in the country and no one can stop me.”
Iron Nine, which led 5-1 after six innings, won its fourth Diamond Nation title in two years by way of a crazy ending. After Minnefor wowed his teammates with a pair of whiffs to escape the top of the eighth, Iron Nine ended the game with its first batter, Miles Jimenez, at the plate. On a 1-1 pitch, Mafia reliever Jake Meyer uncorked a wild pitch and Nick Street scrambled home from third with the winning run.
“They’re used to high-pressure situations,” Reyes said. “It’s our fourth championship here in the last two seasons, and they’re all high intensity games. They came through and did what they do best.”
“We knew we were still going to win that game,” Minnefor said. “We know we have a great group of guys and they are going to come away with a win no matter what.”
Minnefor influenced the game with his bat as well, going 1-for-3 with a walk and two runs scored. For the tournament he drove in seven runs in four games.
Although Jimenez didn’t end the game with his bat, it was ironic that Jimenez was at the plate for the game-concluding at bat because he was the team’s best hitter in the game at that point. He had an RBI single in the first inning, he singled and scored in the fourth, and he reached on an error and scored in the sixth.
More importantly for Iron Nine, Jimenez also pitched lights-out baseball for four innings. He allowed one run on three hits and one walk with two strikeouts using a two-seam fastball, a slurve which tails away from righties, and a splitter.
“He’s our guy when it comes to shut-down innings,” said Reyes, who received two innings of scoreless relief from Jimenez in the team’s first pool game against the Morris County Cubs. “He’s really crafty, he creates soft contact when they put the ball in play, he pitches with his body and controls the tempo very well.”
Jimenez handed off to Logan Bohn who pitched a scoreless fifth inning. Iron Nine’s next reliever, Nick Bongiovanni, stranded two runners in scoring position in the sixth, but was not so fortunate in the seventh when asked to protect a 5-1 lead, surrendering four runs on one hit and four walks.
Street pitched to one batter and a wild pitch allowed Tommy Compton to slide in with the tying run.
That’s when Minnefor entered to record the final out and help Iron Nine avoid playing from behind in its final at bat.
Minnefor was telling parents who were perched along the first base line after the seventh, “They weren’t going to touch me,” and he was still visibly pumped after the trophies were presented and parents finished with pictures.
“That is me all the time,” Minnefor said. “I’m a high energy guy. I want to hype up my teammates. I want to get something going, I want to get the energy loud.”
Said Jimenez, “He gets fired up. I love having him hype up the team.”
Iron Nine’s Jacob Minnefor is the 15U Halloween Mash MVP.
Jimenez was the benefactor of some basic, unselfish baseball as Iron Nine built its 5-1 lead. Two runs came via sacrifice flies and two more came when right-handed batters grounded to the right side while runners scored from third.
“The guys hit really well all season so I wasn’t surprised to see them get the job done,” Jimenez said.
Iron Nine began building its lead in the first when Street lofted a sac fly and Jimenez drove an RBI double into left center for a 2-0 lead.
The Mafia cut its deficit in half in the second when Collin Holonics drove in a run with a groundout.
Iron Nine added two more runs in the fourth when Lucas Askins had a sac fly and Connor DiStefano drilled an RBI single through the middle for a 4-1 lead.
The Iron Nine lead grew to 5-1 in the sixth when DiStefano added an RBI groundout.
In the top of the seventh, PPH rallied with one out. Jarret Intili singled, Dylan Rikley walked, and Intili scored on an errant double play throw on a Holonics grounder.
Jake Brown and Compton earned walks before Jonathan Marottoli and leadoff hitter Brandon Arter both forced in runs with bases on balls to make the score 5-4. Compton soon scored on a wild pitch to tie the game.
For PPH, Intili pitched six innings and allowed five runs on seven hits and three walks with five strikeouts. Meyer escaped a two-out, bases-loaded jam in the seventh with a strikeout. He didn’t yield a hit in his 1⅓ innings but gave up one run on two walks and a hit batsman while striking out two.