Sag Harbor Little League's Majors All-Stars Fall to Riverhead in District Semis; Minors All-Stars Reach District Championship

The Sag Harbor 12-and-under baseball All-Stars team went toe-to-toe with eventual District 36 Champion Riverhead in the tournament’s semifinals at the North Shore Little League Complex in Riverhead on Thursday, July 6, but ultimately it fell just short, losing 5-4.

Riverhead went 5-0 to earn the top seed in Pool B while Sag Harbor went 2-2 to grab the second and final playoff spot from Pool A. Riverhead, which defeated East Hampton on Saturday for the district title, was the favorite going in, but Sag Harbor held leads at various points throughout last week’s game.

“Very resilient, they really wanted it, they fought super, super hard,” manager Brent Greene said of his Sag Harbor players. “Riverhead is an amazing team. I didn’t think we were not outmatched. Thought we were really in a position where we could win this game. It came down to two heads up plays on their team and they took advantage of an opportunity. But I don’t feel that we were in a position where we couldn’t win this game. They got two runs on us late.”

Both teams traded lead changes in the first inning. With Riverhead up, 2-1, in the top of the third, Sag Harbor, which has shown a propensity to making things happen on the base paths and generating runs, played a little small ball with a pair of bunts that loaded the bases. Then Matthew Dehler and Blaise Marienfeld each scored on passed balls, even with a rather short trip to the backstop, giving Sag Harbor a 3-2 lead.

Greene really liked that his team, despite facing a very good opposing pitcher, generated some offense.

“I think that comes with confidence and starting to believe in themselves, and a lot of Little League is about that,” he said. “Riverhead, its pitcher, was really locating his breaking ball and it was clearly something our boys haven’t been exposed to a lot this season, so we really didn’t have an answer for that. When we did hit the ball, some of our kids struck out in key moments, which hurt, but again, that’s baseball. You’ve got to try and find some solutions and we just came up a little short.”

Sag Harbor’s own starting pitcher, Thomas Perri, pitched very well himself. After Sag Harbor took that lead in the top of the third, Riverhead loaded the bases the very next inning, but Perri got out of the jam with a strike out to end the inning. Then, when Riverhead put a runner on third in the bottom of the fourth, Perri struck out another batter to keep the slim lead intact.

There’s a saying in baseball, though, that when good teams are given multiple opportunities to score, eventually they will. And Riverhead was given another opportunity to score with a runner on third and this time it took advantage when a base hit drove in a runner from third base to knot the game up at 3-3. Riverhead then took the lead on a sacrifice fly and then a straight steal of home padded that lead at 5-3.

To Sag Harbor’s credit, the team didn’t go down without a fight in the last inning. Aiden D’Angelo led off the inning with a walk and advanced to second base on a wild pitch. Blaise Marienfeld then hit a slow ground ball between the mound and first base and he beat out the play at first and the errant throw allowed D’Angelo to score to make it a one-run game. But that was as close as Sag Harbor would get as Riverhead shut down the rest of the lineup.

“Thomas Perri got himself out of some jams, one a bases loaded jam, which was great. He also came back from a couple of counts where he was behind, 3-0,” Greene explained. “Our catchers, Cade and Ashton, were really solid back there. They didn’t catch every pitch, but they did catch a couple of tipped balls on third strikes.

“It was an exiting game,” he added. “I wish we had seven, I wish we had eight, because we were really close to getting a couple more on the board.”

While it may have been the end of the road for some of the players who will now transition into school ball going forward, Greene agreed that Sag Harbor baseball, with the additional success of the 10-and-under squad, appears to be live and well.

“I think it’s clear these kids love baseball,” he said. “Our Minors team, their coaches started with those boys at t-ball and then they’re going to come through Majors, and these kids are baseball players. We’ve got some kids that are putting baseball first. Of course we want them to be well rounded athletes, but I am really proud of where Sag Harbor is moving. I like the fact that we’re still supporting the Whalers and there’s a lot of energy and effort that gets those guys hosing. We had Tyler LaBorne who came and did a presentation for us yesterday — incredible. Kids were just hanging on his words. So the idea of getting these boys through the season, and getting them to be in position to get to All-Stars, and to learn their craft and having those mentors to look forward to, that’s a baseball community, right?”

The 12U All-Stars this summer included Cole Baxter, Anthony Cappiello, Aiden D’Angelo, Matthew Dehler, Cade Fisher, Ashton Greene, Blaise Marienfeld, Cameron Mitchell, Michaël Perodin, Thomas Perri, Tyce Russo and Jaxson Schumann. The team was managed by Brent Greene who was assisted Keith Schumann and Bruce Marienfeld.

Minors Baseball
Playing for District Title

As Sag Harbor 10-and-under baseball All-Stars manager Ben Gregor put it, his team may have backed into its District 36 Championship, which was played Tuesday against North Patchogue-Medford, results of which occurred too late to appear in print, but it made it nonetheless. Gregor was well aware heading into the week that its final two games of pool play were going to be its hardest and that proved true. Sag Harbor, which went undefeated through its first four games, suffered its first loss, 8-5, to East Hampton on Thursday, July 6, then lost, 5-2, at North Patchogue-Medford on Saturday in its final game.

North Patchogue-Medford grabbed the top seed in the playoffs by going 6-0, while North Shore Little League’s American All-Stars and Sag Harbor tied for second place with identical 4-2 records, but Sag Harbor earned the second seed and final playoff spot by having the tie breaker (head-to-head record) — Sag Harbor’s 8-7 victory early on in the tournament wound up being the deciding factor. It also helped that East Hampton lost to North Shore American on Saturday to finish with a 3-3 record.

Outside of a 6-5 victory over North Shore American in its first game of pool play, the 5-2 game North Patchogue-Medford won over Sag Harbor on Saturday was one of its more competitive games. Having outscored its opponents, 65-15, through pool play, North Patchogue-Medford dominated most of the competition.

But J.B. Ziglar held North Patchogue-Medford scoreless into the sixth when it put up all five runs. Frank Sokolowski pitched well in relief of Ziglar, Gregor said, who mentioned that his team’s defense fell apart a bit in the last inning. Sag Harbor scratched across two runs in the bottom of the sixth but eventually fell short.

Despite the loss and whatever may have happened in Tuesday’s district championship, Gregor said it’s clear his Sag Harbor players can keep up with what the district has to offer.

“I definitely knew we had some kids that could play baseball no matter what other teams were like,” he said. “I told the kids we belong on the field with any of these other teams, which may be a little bit surprising I would say with the way things have gone in the past. But we have a handful of ballplayers on this team.”

This year’s 10U All-Stars include: Jace Birdsall, Van Chiarello, Grady Craig, Rowan Dodds, Evan Goldstein, Henry Gregor, Ryder Hoffman, Reece Keller, Enzo Mazzeo, Frank Sokolowski, Brandon Yepez Cordova and J.B. Ziglar. The team is coached by Ben Gregor, Ike Birdsall and Mike Chiarello.