By DAVE O’SULLIVAN
Staff Writer
On X @GDsullysays
RICHLAND — Championship-caliber baseball teams know that throughout the course of a season, not everything is going to be sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes, you have a win a baseball game ugly.
St. Augustine Prep, the top seed in the Cape-Atlantic League Tournament, somehow found a way to hang on to beat second-seeded Mainland Regional — one of the hottest teams in the state — on Tuesday afternoon to win the league title. The 10-9 victory over the Mustangs in our Bunting Family Pharmacy Marquee Matchup marked the first CAL title for the Hermits since 2022, and it was anything but pretty. The Hermits committed six errors and left eight runners on base, but when push came to shove their offense came through and scored a pair of runs in the bottom of the sixth inning off Mainland reliever Jake Lodgek, one of the top pitchers in all of South Jersey.
What started out as a pitcher’s duel between St. Augustine Prep’s Jameson Dobis — a senior with a 1.70 ERA — and Mainland senior Luca Bruno quickly devolved into chaos in the fourth and fifth innings. Prep put together a five run inning in the bottom of the fourth to take what seemed like a commanding 8-1 lead, but Mainland stormed back with eight runs in the top of the fifth to retake the lead, 9-8.
Prep tied the game at 9 in the bottom of the sixth on a pair of Mustangs errors, then senior Joey Peacock — 0-for-3 with a couple of strikeouts prior to that at-bat — laced an RBI single up the middle to give the Hermits a 10-9 lead. Senior lefty Jack McNamee, who has pitched all of 11 innings this season, calmly retired the Mustangs in order in the top of the seventh to nail down the win.
“We got out to an early lead, but they were hot and we’re not, clearly. There’s no hiding that,” said Prep coach Mike Ney, referring to Mainland’s eight-game winning streak coming in that included the Diamond Classic championship. “They punched us, and we had enough in the tank to punch back. We’ve been talking a lot about being accountable for certain things and how we’re going to overcome adversity, and we’re facing a little bit right now. We have some things going on with certain guys, injury-wise and things happening, so that was a good team win. I was proud of the way we responded. There’s no quit in these guys.”
The winning rally started with Alex Weingartner reaching on an infield error, then an overthrow of first on a bunt attempt allowed him to score to tie the game, 9-9. Marco Christopher, who laid down the bunt, ended up at third base on the overthrow and trotted home when Peacock ripped a fastball up the middle for a 10-9 Hermits lead.
“They had a good pitcher on the mound, I was just trying to get on time, backspin a fastball. He gave me a fastball first pitch and I fouled it off. I was still thinking heater, got on time, backspun it up the middle,” Peacock said. “It was a full team effort. We had the big inning, then they had the big inning, but we came out on top. We were only down one and we had nine outs (to work with) and we found a way to do it.”
St. Augustine jumped out to an early 3-1 lead, then increased that to 5-1 on an RBI single by junior Hank Biglan, who has just seven at-bats this season. Rutgers University commit Joey Erace followed with an RBI single to left, and Weingartner capped the fourth-inning rally with a two-run double to center field that pushed the lead to 8-1. Weingartner went 2-for-3 with a pair of doubles, two runs scored and three RBIs for the Hermits.
But Mainland stormed back with eight runs in the top of the fifth. The inning started innocently enough, with a walk to shortstop Colten Donahue, but then things started to unravel for Prep. After a single, an error, a hit batsman and a squeeze bunt, Mainland had clawed back to 8-3. An RBI infield single by Lodgek cut the deficit in half, 8-4, but then Mainland rallied for five runs with two outs. Chase Camac laced a two-run single to left to cut the Hermits’ lead to 8-6, and Brady Arena tied the game at 8 with a two-run single to left. Bruno followed with a run-scoring single to center that put Mainland ahead, 9-8.
The Hermits, who had lost 5-of-9 games coming in and were bounced from the Diamond Classic in the quarterfinals, needed to respond, and they did behind their seniors.
“We had lost 3-of-4 going into this, back-to-back losses — I’ve been coaching here a long time … I can’t really remember the last time we had this many losses in such a short period of time,” said Ney, who led the Hermits to a state championship last year in his first year as head coach after assisting long time skipper Mike Bylone. “It’s a little eerily similar to last year, to a certain extent. I’m just proud of them for staying together. We’ve had guys who haven’t had many opportunities all year who stepped up and played a big part. We lose one of our best players late in the game and guys just stepped up. Jack comes in and just does a great job throwing strikes, keeping guys off base and we were making plays behind him.
“We got some big hits, and that’s what it comes down to — pitching defense and timely hitting — that’s how you win games,” he added. “They stayed together. I need them to be a unit right now, we all have to stick together and find a way. If we can carry this going forward, that’s a good thing for us. It’s a sign of good things to come.”
WHAT’S NEXT: St. Augustine Prep hosts Rancocas Valley today at 4 p.m. Mainland Regional awaits its matchup in the opening round of the South Jersey Group 3 tournament next week.
