The RCS Warpath 16U Gold rebounded from a rare shutout to claim the Northeast Championship.
By Rich Bevensee
When RCS Warpath 16U Gold was shut out Thursday evening. It was the first time all summer the Hazleton, Pennsylvania, ballclub was blanked. Coach John Petrikyak let his players know of his displeasure.
“Do you want the PG version or the R version?” Petrikyak asked DiamondNation.com after the game, and demanded an immediate change in his team’s game-day approach.
One player who took that message to heart was Colin Shannon.
Despite the pool play result, RCS permitted the least amount of runs in four pool games and qualified to play in the championship game the next day. Shannon was scheduled to start and he let Petrikyak know he was listening.
Shannon, a 6-3 right-handed pitcher, was magnificent through seven innings, facing one batter over the minimum and throwing the first no-hitter of his career to lift RCS Warpath Gold to a 7-0 victory over the Blue Sox Baseball Club and the Northeast Championship team title at Diamond Nation in Flemington.
“It just felt good after yesterday because we were kind of down,” said Shannon, named the tournament’s Most Valuable Player. “Coach talked to us, wanted us to start playing as a team more. I wanted to come out here and give everything to my team.”
Shannon, a rising junior at Lewisburg Area (Pa.) High, threw 87 pitches to complete his gem, using an 81-mph four-seam fastball, slider and curveball to strike out 10.
In fact, Shannon was two batters from a perfect game. He allowed a walk in the fifth inning but that runner was erased when second baseman Roman Bednarek initiated a 4-6-3 double play. Another Blue Sox runner reached on a one-out, infield throwing error in the seventh inning, but Shannon got a groundout and strikeout to cap the no-hitter.
“The last two innings it struck me about the no-hitter when I looked at the scoreboard and there was nothing up there,” Shannon said. “I really just tried to stick to my pitches and not think too much because that will mess you up.”
RCS Warpath 16U Gold rode the right arm of MVP Colin Shannon, who pitched a no-hitter in the final.
Shannon threw 11 pitches in relief in RCS’ 3-0 loss to the Rochester Brewers the night before. In the final, Petrikyak was especially pleased that Shannon’s first-pitch percentage for strikes was 64 percent.
“I’ll take that all day long,” Petrikyak said. “His previous two starts that number was in the low 50s. His breaking ball was working well today. He was going to throw one inning yesterday as sort of a bullpen to warm up and he was only going to throw five today. But when we saw the scoreboard read no hits, he wanted to keep going. I was proud of him.
“When he comes, he comes with a purpose. He plays with a purpose.
If I had nine of him I’d be all right.”
The RCS Warpath offense resumed its normal offensive attack in the final following the scoreless hiccup on Thursday night. After scoring 39 runs in three pool wins, RCS scored seven runs on seven hits and went 4-for-6 with runners in scoring position.
“Approaches were a lot better today,” Petrikyak said. “A little more first-pitch swinging earlier in the count, not waiting till there’s two strikes, and no rollovers like we did the other night.”
Jordan DiPinto, a rising junior at Marple Newtown in Newtown Square, Pa., has begun to sting the ball a little more in the last few weeks. He came through in the fifth inning with a big two-run single down the first base line which gave RCS a 6-0 lead.
“Lately I haven’t been swinging at first pitch fastballs and I was waiting to get a strike,” DiPinto said. “Today I attacked the ball. I went for the first-pitch fastball and hit it as hard as I could.”
DiPinto, like Shannon, made sure to put Petrikyak’s message into practice. For the week DiPinto went 4-for-12 with a home run, four RBI and four runs scored.
“We all got together for a big team talk after last night’s game,” DiPinto said. “Our approaches were not to attack the ball yesterday, and today we fixed that. We were attacking more and we hit the fastball more.”
Offensively for RCS, Chris Knelly had an RBI double to jump-start the offense in the third inning and Landon Trout followed with an RBI triple.
In the fourth, Cyrus Heddings and Bednarek each got two-out base hits and Frankie Fallabell loaded the bases with a walk. Leadoff hitter Teague Stahovic then singled through the middle to knock in Heddings and Bednarek for a 4-0 lead.
In the fifth, DiPinto singled in two runs and later scored on a dropped third strike to Heddings.
It was a welcome return to offensive baseball for RCS (15-6), which averaged seven runs per game coming into the final.
“A lot of our outs were hard hit and we didn’t strike out a lot so it was a solid offensive day for the team,” Shannon said. “It always feels good as a pitcher when you have solid offense backing you up.”
The run production was especially welcomed by Shannon, who has come a long way health-wise since the high school season when he was suffering from a sacroiliac joint issue in his lower back.
“It really kept me from pitching,” Shannon said. “I was only able to go out for one or two innings at a time without it really bothering me. Between high school and summer ball I’ve been working with Heidi (Peters, the RCS trainer) to figure out those back issues. It feels really good to be back.”
For the Blue Sox (11-12), who hail from Orange County, N.Y., Kyle Gagliano pitched the first four innings and yielded five runs, four earned, on five hits and two walks with two strikeouts. Jack Murphy gave up two runs in two innings on two hits and one walk with one strikeout.
It was a tight race to qualify for the championship game. Four teams had 3-1 pool play records – RCS Warpath, the Blue Sox, the Rochester Brewers and the Rams Baseball Club. The first tiebreaker is runs allowed and RCS led all teams by allowing just five runs in four games. They were followed by the Blue Sox (11), the Brewers (13) and the Rams (20).