After running through its league schedule undefeated, the Bradford Legion baseball team got a bit of a wakeup call on Sunday, falling to St. Marys 4-1 in the Elk County Legion playoffs at Pitt-Bradford’s Kessel Athletic Complex.
Thanks to the double-elimination format of the tournament, Bradford will get another shot against St. Marys later today. It’s a second chance they must feel lucky to have after a game where neither team was particularly sharp.
St. Marys recorded all four of its runs in the fifth inning thanks to three consecutive Bradford errors. The defensive blunders squandered a very good performance from starting pitcher Gage Babcock, who struck out five and allowed just four hits and three walks in seven innings of work. He also was one of the only sources of offense in the game for Bradford, going 3-for-4 with a triple.
“We had a defensive breakdown,” Bradford coach Brian Fox said in reference to his team’s sloppy fifth inning. “But I’m looking at more that we had one run in seven innings more than we had a three-error inning that gave them four runs.”
Double plays were the order of the day for both teams early on. St. Marys hit into two double plays in the first two innings, while Bradford hit into one of its own in the bottom of the first.
Bradford was able to get on the board first in its half of the second. After Danny Manion led off the frame with a single, he quickly came around to score on a St. Marys throwing error.
It would be the only run Bradford would score in the game, though there were chances aplenty for more.
Babcock’s triple came with two outs in the third, but a routine ground ball to third ended the threat in short order. The team’s best chance to climb back into the contest came in the sixth inning with the bases loaded with only one man out. But another double play — this one of the 1-2-3 (pitcher-catcher-first base) variety — took the air out of the home crowd.
Bradford would get one more chance in the bottom of the seventh, placing runners on the corners with one out to bring the tying run to the plate. But a lazy pop-up to shortstop clinched the victory for St. Marys.
St. Marys starter Will Uberti went six innings, and despite finishing with just one strikeout, managed to keep Bradford guessing all game long.
“I think that young guy pitched a phenomenal baseball game,” Fox said of Uberti. “He kept us off-balance, had a lot of offspeed stuff, and we just never hit the ball hard all night. We had several innings where we never even had a baserunner.”
Dan Stauffer came in to close things out for St. Marys in the seventh.
St. Marys started the decisive fifth inning with a single from Austin Sadosky (2-for-3) and a walk by Dan Stauffer. Each of the next three at-bats resulted in Bradford miscues in the field. Before you knew it, the score read St. Marys 4, Bradford 1.
For all of its struggles at the plate, Bradford actually had more scoring chances than St. Marys thanks to Babcock’s strong outing on the mound. One bad defensive inning and little offensive support made him the hard-luck loser.
“I thought Gage did everything we asked of him,” Fox said. “He gave up four hits; he did his job. We could’ve won that game with one or two runs just on his pitching performance alone and we didn’t give him any support at the plate, which we typically do.”
It will be a quick turnaround for both teams, which doesn’t figure to be much of an issue given how familiar the two sides are with another. For Fox, it’s all about regaining focus after a defeat, a problem that they haven’t had to contend with much this season.
“This is our first loss in the league with this team together so it’s a little bit of a shot in the arm,” he said. “Sometimes teams improve with a loss and I hope that’s the situation here. [Monday’s] the real baseball game where both teams have to win.”
Both Bradford and St. Marys have already secured places in the Region 8 Baseball playoffs.
