Bacall, South baseball turns tables on Steinert
By Justin Feil, Assistant Sports Editor
Zach Bacall loves to turn the double play.
Against Steinert in the Mercer County Tournament quarterfinals on Saturday, West Windsor-Plainsboro High South’s junior second baseman had a pair of chances, one a 6-4-3, the other a 5-4-3.
”Double plays, in my opinion, are easily one of the most exciting parts in baseball,” Bacall said. “To finish it off, I think all three of ours today were inning enders. It’s one of the best ways to sway the game.”
The Pirates defense and some timely hitting combined with the five-hit pitching of Jake Nieschmidt as the 11th-seeded Pirates upset third-seeded Steinert, 4-2, in the Mercer County Tournament quarterfinals Saturday.
”Through our team there’s just been a better energy coming into the last part of the season,” Bacall said. “We’ve been struggling against some of the better teams, but we’ve been keeping it close.”
In the first round, No. 15 seed Princeton High lost to second-seeded Pennington, 5-2, while No. 10 seed Hun fell to No. 7 Ewing, 1-0. No. 16 Princeton Day School lost to top-seeded Hamilton, 9-1. Hamilton also defeated WW-P North, which had opened with a win over Hopewell Valley.
It all has come together as of late for WW-P South. The Pirates have won three straight games since a close 5-2 loss to Steinert last Monday. They played a solid all-around game in a 3-2 upset of Robbinsville in the MCT first round, turned a pair of double plays against Trenton in a 13-8 win, then upset Steinert. WW-P South has played better than its 10-9 record.
”We’ve played competitive games all year,” said Pirates head coach Don Hutchinson. “We exceeded my expectations. Our starting lineup is all juniors except our center fielder. They haven’t had at bats against this level of pitching. The batting has gotten better and fielding has gotten better. We won two games against good teams now.”
The difference is the Pirates are making plays now. Bacall and shortstop Danny Borup didn’t have many opportunities to turn the double play in the beginning of the year.
”I don’t honestly think we turned one in the first half of the year,” he said. “Lately, our pitchers have been rolling ground balls. Our defense has gotten better. We’ve been steady. We just needed that opportunity.”
The Pirates jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first inning on Austin Lindner’s two-run double with two outs. Steinert tied it up, but it could have been worse. The Pirates twice looked as though they had a Steinert runner out on a pick-off in the inning, and he eventually scored, but WW-P South limited the damage.
”I give them a lot of credit for getting past the adversity and keeping it tied,” Hutchinson said. “We could have fallen apart.”
Pat Tso’s sixth inning sacrifice fly provided the winning run, and Sean O’Brien’s double in the seventh gave the Pirates an insurance run, which looked all the bigger with the way Nieschmidt was throwing.
”He throws a lot of strikes,” Hutchinson said. “He’s not afraid to pitch the ball over the middle of the plate and have them hit it. He attacks the strike zone, he works fast. We played good defense behind him.
”You have to force them to swing the bat. He threw strike one a lot. He was 0-1 on a lot of hitters. They try to take a lot of pitches so it makes a big difference. That’s how you can pitch a complete game.”
It helped that his defense was solid all game. They got double plays in the first inning that helped preserve their 2-0 edge and another in the sixth with a 3-2 lead.
”Zach, he turned a couple of them,” Hutchinson said. “He’s really good at turning it. He turned two or three in the Trenton game. They’re starting to heat that up a bit. You get one pitch, two outs, it’s a rally killer and it preserves a pitcher’s arm and it’s huge for momentum.”
Momentum has carried over for the Pirates since their win over Robbinsville to open the MCT. They will try to keep it going today against the Ewing-Pennington winner. The Pirates lost to both teams in the regular season, just as they had lost to Steinert before Saturday’s meeting.
”We have nothing to lose,” Bacall said. “Right now, we don’t even know if we’re making states. The MCTS, it’s kind of like our last hurrah. We want to be able to go out of the season with a good feeling, high hopes.
”We didn’t feel much pressure. We were loose this morning. We had nothing to lose. We had to show the rest of the CVC we could hang with them.”