The Liverpool baseball team has earned the top seed for the eight-team Section III Class AA tournament – and Cicero-North Syracuse is the no. 2 seed.
To start with, the Warriors are paired with no. 8 seed Central Square in Thursday’s quarterfinal as C-NS, the no. 2 seed, meets no. 7 seed Auburn. They both want to get to Sunday’s semifinals at Onondaga Community College, where the final also takes place next Tuesday night.
All eyes were on C-NS team as it took on Syracuse last Tuesday afternoon because Syracuse’s Jeff Belge was making his last start of the season, barely two weeks before he was likely to get taken in the Major League Baseball Draft.
But having seen Belge before, the Northstars were ready for him, staying patient and then scoring twice in the top of the fourth inning to go in front. Not stopping there, C-NS added a run in the third and four more in the seventh on the way to a 7-0 shutout.
There was a pitching gem – but it came from the Northstars’ Luke Dziados. Over six innings, Dziados managed eight strikeouts, less than Belge’s 12, but he only gave up three hits and two walks.
Nick Spinella and Connor Stanton supplied some C-NS power, each of them belting home runs. A.J. Nesci added an RBi as Brendan Reilly doubled and scored twice. Dylan Frawley and Chris Cramer also drove in runs.
This hoopla sharply contrasted C-NSs’ 11-1 win over Syracuse the day before at the Gillette Road complex, where the Northstars’ bats, quiet for long stretches of the season, spoke up during a decisive seven-run first inning.
Ultimately, C-NS produced 12 hits, four of them by James Salamone, who scored three times and earned an RBI to go with his six solid innings on the mound where he only allowed one hit – Keegan Heinrich’s RBI single in the fifth that brought Jon Vazquez home with Syracuse’s lone run.
Reilly went deep for a home run as he produced a team-best three RBIs. Zach Williamson and Mike Sciore each drove in two runs as Dziados and tanton both doubled and had an RBI.
Going for the series sweep on Thursday, C-NS got it, handling Syracuse 8-1 to finish up its regular season at 15-5, holding the no. 19 state Class AA ranking – five spots behind Liverpool, who was no. 14 largely because it beat C-NS two out of three times in the regular season.
The Warriors still had to put away the CNY Counties League regular-season title, and did so, starting its series with Auburn last Monday with a 12-1 rout over the Maroons.
Warriors left-handed pitcher Jeff DeStefano got close to a no-hitter, taking it all the way to the seventh, where Auburn’s Steve Bennett supplied the lone blemish with a solo home run. Still, it was a one-hit gem by DeStefano, who struck out eight and only allowed a single walk.
A six-run first inning gave Liverpool all the runs it needed, but it tacked on four runs in the fourth and two more in the sixth. Dillan Wilkinson and Michael Wright, with two RBIs apiece, led the attack as Kyle Watson, Rocco Leone, Jonah Harder, Tom Bianchi and Jake Evans each drove in one run. Kyle Terzini scored twice.
In the second game of the series Tuesday at Auburn, little changed, except that the margin was a bit smaller. Liverpool blanked Auburn 9-0, and while pitcher Joel Ciccarelli allowed four hits and one walk, he kept Auburn off the board, striking out five and, like DeStefano the day before, getting plenty of run support.
Breaking up a 0-0 deadlock, the Warriors scored twice in the top of the third, and then chased Maroons starter Brendan Williams following a four-run fifth inning and three-run sixth inning as Wilkinson went four-for-four, scoring a run. Evans tripled, singled twice and earned a pair of RBIs, with Leone scoring three times as he and Terzini both drove in runs. Anthony Sgroi scored twice.
Having clinched the regular-season league title with that win, Liverpool could, at this point, afford one bad performance – and suffered it in the series finale against Auburn, falling to the Maroons 5-1 as Evan Shurtleff took the loss, going five innings before Nick Antonello and Devan Mederios saw relief duty.
Steadily, the Maroons built a 5-0 edge by the sixth inning before the Warriors got its lone run in the bottom of the seventh, when Terzini doubled and scored on Kyle Mounce’s single. Otherwise, Auburn pitcher Steve Bennett was quite effective, limiting Liverpool to six hits, striking out nine and even getting a solo home run.
To cap off this terrific regular season, Liverpool beat Christian Brothers Academy 3-1 on Saturday afternoon, scoring twice in the top of the first inning off Brothers pitcher James McGlynn and adding a run in the fifth as Leone scored twice, with Wilkinson and Bianchi each getting one RBI.
The pitching was superb, too, with Wilkinson, Harder and DeStefano on the way to a combined three-hit shutout before CBA’s Dom Spinoso homered off DeStefano in the bottom of the seventh. The trio had seven total strikeouts.
