South Fayette squeezed out of PIAA playoffs
The players at Meadville are the Cardiac Kids of high school baseball in Pennsylvania. Eight of the Bulldogs’ 18 games have been decided by one run, including a PIAA Class 4A first-round game Monday afternoon.
Meadville was in another nail-biter, tied 1-1 in the eighth inning, when the Bulldogs knew exactly what could get them through this tight situation – the aptly named squeeze play. Or suicide squeeze, to be more accurate.
Wyett Smith dropped down a perfectly executed suicide squeeze bunt that scored Nick Rinella from third base in the top of the eighth and gave Meadville a 2-1 victory over WPIAL champion South Fayette at Washington & Jefferson College’s Ross Memorial Park.
“We have been in so many one-run games that I think those experiences helped us in this one,” Meadville coach Bruce Stewart said.
It was Stewart who called for the squeeze play after Meadville loaded the bases with no outs in the eighth against South Fayette reliever Richie Dell. After Dell struck out Cole Potase for the inning’s first out, Stewart put on the suicide squeeze with Smith, a left-handed batter.
South Fayette coach Ken Morgan said his team was caught by surprise that Meadville would try the high-risk play with a left-handed batter, leaving the runner susceptible to a pitchout.
“Yes, we were a little surprised,” Morgan said. “They were much more aware of it than we were. They executed it perfectly.”
Rinella broke for home plate and Smith put down the bunt that went only about 25 feet up the third-base line and was fielded by Dell, whose only play was to throw out Smith at first base.
Meadville had loaded the bases on two walks around an infield single. It was the second consecutive inning in which the Bulldogs scored a run without hitting a ball out of the infield.
South Fayette led 1-0 in the seventh and was only one out away from winning when the Lions opened the door for a Meadville comeback. A throwing error on a ball hit by Tony Cappellino was followed by a two-base error on a pickoff throw by starting pitcher Tyler Bedillion, who was masterful and deserved a better fate than a no-decision.
The errors put pinch-runner Landon Beck on third base, and he scored when Zach Wilson beat out a slow bouncer that hugged the third-base line and went for an infield single.
The win advances Meadville (13-5) to the quarterfinals Thursday and ends the season for South Fayette (17-6). For the young Lions, the game was a painful lesson in what can happen when you let a team stay within striking distance instead of delivering the knockout punch.
South Fayette led 1-0 only three batters into the bottom of the first inning, and had seven hits but only one run through three innings. The Lions left at least one runner on base in every inning but the seventh, stranded 10 baserunners, including five in scoring position, and had one runner tagged out at home plate trying to score on a wild pitch.
“You don’t look for excuses but those things happen in high school baseball,” Morgan said. “You have to put yourself in position that something like that doesn’t come back to bite you.”
As the game progressed, Meadville had a familiar feeling.
“We’ve been in a lot of close games where we’ve left small villages on base,” Stewart said. “It’s ironic that the roles were reversed in this one.
“I was telling our guys that (South Fayette) is letting us hang around. I’ve seen so many times when a team thinks its talent is better but lets the other team hang around and gets beaten at the end.”
South Fayette took a 1-0 lead in the first inning when Joey Alcorn, Mitch Dunay and Eli Snider hit consecutive singles off Meadville starter Chad Neugebauer. That, however, would be all the runs the Lions would generate despite Dunay going 3-for-4 with two doubles.
It seemed like the one run would be all that Bedillion would need. He allowed only three hits over seven innings, did not walk a batter and struck out five. He used a biting two-seam fastball to induce 14 groundball outs.
The Lions’ offense, however, never did get the clutch hit that could have broken open the game. Morgan said that might have been because his team was battling the “WPIAL hangover.”
“You like to think that is not the case, but we didn’t have the energy that we did last week,” he said. “You have that high of a WPIAL championship and celebrate with the community, but good programs are able to overcome that and refocus.”