Bonacs’ Postseason Run Ends, but Program Takes Another Step Forward With First Playoff Win in Over a Decade

Baby steps.

Last spring, the East Hampton baseball team qualified for the postseason for the first time in 11 years. This spring, the plan was to take things a bit further with a playoff win and hopefully a longer run.

The Bonackers accomplished at least one of those goals.

After losing its playoff opener, 4-3, in heartbreaking fashion at No. 3 Miller Place on May 16, No. 6 East Hampton defeated No. 7 Comsewogue, 13-5, at home in an elimination game the very next day in what was the program’s first playoff victory in at least a dozen years, head coach Vinny Alversa remarked after the game. On Thursday, May 18, though, Bonac’s run ended with a 4-1 loss at No. 4 Sayville.

“It was a great year. It really, really was,” Alversa said. “It’s weird seeing Sayville play Mount Sinai. Rocky Point, which was the two seed in our bracket, won its first game but then lost big time in its next two games. It was fun, though. Had we won on Tuesday, it would have set us up differently, but we’ve played in eight one-run games all year. We were right there with everyone.”

East Hampton’s offense couldn’t get anything going against Sayville starting pitcher Andrew Law, who pitched a complete game allowing one run and only three hits. The Bonackers only struck out two or three times, Alversa said, but his players hit the ball right at Sayville defenders. Hunter Eberhart started for East Hampton and only threw 68 pitches in six innings. Alversa said Sayville “dinked and dunked” Eberhart on offense to score its first two runs. Nico Horan-Puglia homered to put East Hampton on the board, but the Flashes responded with a home run of their own to make up the final score.

“It was a fast-paced game. I thought we were going to continue to stay hot, but nothing fell in for us,” Alversa said. “[Law] didn’t walk us much, but he didn’t give us much of anything else either.”

The Sayville game was in stark contrast to the Bonackers’ victory over Comsewogue the previous day, in which they had to have drawn nearly close to a dozen walks and came up with timely hits en route to posting 13 runs, four of which came on the onset of the game in the bottom of the first. Carter Dickinson doubled in Tyler Hansen for the first run of the game, and after Egan Barzilay was hit by a pitch to force in a run with the bases loaded, Mason Miles lined a base hit to center field that scored a pair of runs.

Comsewogue brought itself back into the game with one swing of the bat in the top of the third thanks to a three-run home run to straightaway center field, but Bonac bounced back with a five-run fifth, then tacked on four more in the sixth to really put the game out of reach for the Warriors. It was also more than enough run support for Bonac starting pitcher Jack Dickinson, who outside the three-run homer he allowed, which came on a misplaced slider, was quite good, striking out 12 before being relieved with one out in the top of the seventh inning. It wound up being the final start for Dickinson in his high school career.

East Hampton had a 1-0 lead over Miller Place in the seventh inning of the playoff opener only for the Panthers to tie the game in the bottom of the inning to force extra innings. A balk call that Alversa didn’t necessarily question but he did point out that he didn’t think his pitchers committed one balk season long, created a second and third situation where a sacrifice fly ultimately tied the game at 1-1. A double by Carter Dickinson drove in East Hampton’s two runs in the top of the eighth, but Miller Place tied the game on another sac fly then won the game at a close play at the plate.

That playoff opener just goes to show just how competitive, and grueling, Suffolk County baseball playoffs can actually be and what they’ve become. This year’s “AA” and “A” playoffs were split by the two conferences that play within them — East Hampton played in the Conference IV bracket. This year’s county champions are determined by each conference champion playing one another in a best-of-three series. With a double-elimination format still in place, teams that lost their openers on May 16 needed to win every following day up until this past Friday in order to stay alive until the next elimination game on Monday.

Miller Place is hosting Sayville in that game and the winner will play at top-seed Bayport-Blue Point the very next day. If Sayville beats Bayport in that game both teams will play again to determine the conference champion, and the winner of that game moves on to play at least another two games for the county championship, not to mention a proceeding Long Island Championship, before finally getting to a state semifinal. After all is said and done, teams can play an additional half-dozen games or so before the season is actually over.

“Once you lose, you’ve got a gauntlet of three in a row,” Alversa said. “It was there for us but it was a matter of getting that big hit all year. For the most part, we were in every game thanks to our pitching. We’d hand the ball off to someone like Hunter who’d give us some really great late innings. But I have to say, Bayport is sitting in the driver’s seat being that they have to be beat twice.”

The Bonackers are graduating a rather large class of seniors in the coming weeks, headlined by their trio of players who are moving on to play ball in college, which includes Will Darrell (Vassar), Jack Dickinson (Niagara) and Eberhart (Crown College). Darrell is also a part of an entire outfield that will need to be replaced with Calum Anderson, Egan Barzilay and Danny Lester all set to graduate as well. All three aren’t playing baseball in college but are going to some good colleges. Anderson will play volleyball at SUNY Potsdam and Barzilay is going to Duke, while Lester is going to Lynn University in Florida.

“Hurts losing those guys because I’ve been with them for so long, some longer than others,” Alversa said. “Some I’ve been with since seventh and eighth grade. They’re all a great group of leaders.”

Alversa is very high with what he has coming back, though. Hansen, Carter Dickinson and Hudson Meyer will be juniors next year, but with multiple years of varsity experience, and freshman Mason Miles showed late in the season he has a varsity-ready bat. And Alversa said even though the pitching is taking a hit through graduation, he’s expecting to reload that from a strong crop of JV players that will make the move up to varsity next season, along with some varsity arms returning.