By Wayne Witkowski
Pitcher Brandon Holup of Jackson begins his quest for a third trip to the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) championship game with his East Stroudsburg University teammates May 7, and the senior right-hander may play two different roles toward that end.
“He’ll be coming out of the bullpen for us in game 1 and if we get to game 4, he’ll be starting,” said head coach John Kochmansky, whose team set a school record for wins in a season at 35-14, surpassing the prior record set in Holup’s freshman year.
East Stroudsburg is the No. 3 seed in the PSAC East, and the top four teams qualify for the tournament.
Both pitching roles are familiar to Holup throughout his career with the Warriors, who reached the NCAA Tournament as conference champion in his freshman year. Holup began this season as the closer before being moved back to a starter in the early going for the four-game conference weekend sets.
Unlike the conference weekend games that are played over seven innings, the tournament games are played over nine innings, which increases the need for depth on the pitching staff.
“Overall, I thought I did pretty well this year starting out in the pen and then getting a starting role. I trusted in the coaches and got run support,” Holup said.
But Holup took only his second loss in seven decisions in the final game of the regular season — a 10-2 loss to West Chester University, which clinched the four-game weekend series, 3-1. It was only the second weekend series lost by the Warriors, with the other coming to Millersville University (three games to one), the top seed in PSAC East.
West Chester leapfrogged East Stroudsburg into the No. 2 spot in the East off the weekend series.
“I thought I pitched well, but not good enough to get a win,” said Holup, a former Jersey Shore Player of the Year at Jackson Memorial High School who allowed five runs on eight hits in five innings to West Chester before giving way to four relievers.
Some miscues by the Warriors helped West Chester cash in on its scoring threats.
“They’re a fastball hitting team, and I tried to set up the fastball with my off-speed stuff, and they were just waiting on it,” said Holup, who relies on his two- and four-seam fastballs. “You can’t make mistakes.”
Holup said he also could not fault his teammates’ mistakes in the field that figured in West Chester’s scoring, saying that he makes some on the mound as well, including on that day.
East Stroudsburg came into the weekend ranked No. 13 in the latest National College Baseball Writers Association Division II ranking and also likely will move down behind West Chester in the region seedings, where they came into last weekend’s series ranked No. 2 and 3, respectively.
Neither Holup nor Kochmansky seemed concerned afterward about dropping the weekend series going into the PSAC playoffs, and the coach conveyed that to his team in the postgame speech, pointing to the playoffs as the start of a new season. Last year’s team reached the conference tournament championship as the fourth and final seed in the East Division. The 2013 team — Holup’s freshman year — won the tournament for the first time since 1977.
“This won’t affect us too much,” Holup said of the West Chester series. “This is a mentally sound team where we’ve been pitching well and hitting well, and now we’re going for bigger and better things.”
“We set a school record for wins, which speaks for itself,” Kochmansky said. “This team has a lot of resolve and has battled injuries, including some that people don’t know about. Consistency wins, and this team is a model for consistency.”
Holup will play his role. After three relief appearances at the start of the season, he rated among the best of the starters in his eight starts along much of his stat line. In 51 innings pitched during the regular season, Holup has 47 strikeouts and 18 walks. Opposing hitters are batting only .296 against him, and he allowed only two home runs, including a three-run homer April 30.
“He’s really a competitor,” Kochmansky said of Holup. “He always gives his best, even if he doesn’t have his best stuff. In his four years here, he has grown as a baseball player and a person. He’s such a great person. We’ll miss him for his hard work he’s shown to the other guys — how to be successful.”
Holup has come on strongly since his junior year, which he also started off in a relief role. He came into the season named to the Collegiate Baseball Newspaper preseason All-America team and was an all-region second team selection. Despite his 2-3 record and 5.20 ERA, Holup said he was pleased with what he accomplished that season. Holup struck out 44 and walked 12 in 36.1 innings pitched.
Holup had earned those preseason honors coming off a sophomore season in which he was named to the Daktronics and ABCA All-Region second team and All-PSAC East first team — the first East Stroudsburg sophomore to earn the PSAC and region honors at the school in 25 years. In that season, Holup was 5-2 with a 2.19 ERA. Opposing hitters batted just .232 against him, as he struck out 29 and walked 17 in 49.1 innings pitched.
As a freshman on East Stroudsburg’s PSAC championship team, Holup went 2-1 with a 2.77 ERA in 26 innings, including five starts. Opponents batted .269 against him, and he struck out 24 and walked 12.
Locally, Holup is remembered for his senior year at Jackson Memorial, when he went 8-2 with 0.75 ERA in 66 innings for the Shore Conference A South Division and NJSIAA Central Jersey, Group IV championship team. He struck out 70 and walked 13 with six shutouts, including five consecutive at the end of the season off a fastball that seemed unhittable at times against high school opponents.
He would love to end his college career with another conference championship.