wrapping up y-d’s title

A few more notes on the Cape League championship.

In looking at the team stats for the playoffs, the thing that stands out is Y-D’s pitching. The Red Sox team ERA in four playoff games was exactly 1.00, by far the best mark of any playoff team. Y-D used seven pitchers. Only two of them gave up runs — Terry Doyle and Eddie Burns — and they gave up just two apiece in more than six innings. Trevor Holder and Scott Green started the other two games and neither allowed a run. The bullpen, which had been somewhat of a question mark during the season, shined when it counted. D.J. Mauldin pitched 4.1 scoreless innings and Nick Cassavechia went three scoreless innings, picking up one save.

The best pitching performance, though, belongs to Holder. The sophomore from Georgia went eight innings in game two of the championship series, struck out 10, walked two and didn’t allow a run. He earned playoff MVP honors, and they were well-deserved. I looked back at the pitching performances in championship series deciding games and Holder’s is by far the best in the last four years (I wanted to go back further but earlier years don’t have full playoff stats online). Holder’s performance rivals any regular playoff start, too. Only Riley Boening can stake claim to a better game. Wareham’s Boening struck out 14 in a complete-game shutout in last year’s first round. For Holder, the playoff start capped a remarkable finish. After coming out of the bullpen most of the year, Holder made three starts near the end of the regular season and in those games, he allowed just two runs in 19.2 innings. When you add in the playoff start, Holder’s numbers for the season look like this: 5-1, .71 ERA, 38 K, 10 BB, .167 OPP Avg., 1.06 WHIP. So maybe it wasn’t a complete surprise that Holder dominated in the championship. But still amazing. As noted in the Cape Cod Times, Holder and Gordon Beckham — his summer and college teammate — planned to leave for Georgia right after Tuesday’s game. It must have been a fun ride.

The Y-D offense wasn’t hitting quite as often as it did in the regular season, but it was just as powerful. Of Y-D’s 26 post-season hits, six were home runs. Grant Green had two hits in 12 at-bats, but both were home runs. Beckham, Romero, Castro and Collin Cowgill also had home runs.

When closer Nick Cassavechia struck out Aja Barto to end Tuesday’s game, he must have known what the other dugout was feeling. Cassavechia pitched last year for Wareham, the team Y-D beat for the 2006 title. Cassavechia pitched late in game three of the ’06 championship series, when Y-D already had a 5-1 lead.

As commenter Colonel Sanders suggested on Codball, Y-D’s Terry Doyle may someday be a Cape League Hall of Famer, with his performance in game one of the championship series further cementing that status. The big right-hander has pitched two summers on the Cape. Last year, he was the co-pitcher of the year after going 5-1 with a 2.89 ERA. After a so-so college season this spring and a lower-than-expected draft spot, Doyle returned to the Cape and started slow. But he finished strong and ended up with a better ERA than he had last year (2.33) to go along with six wins, which tied him for the league lead. In addition to those season numbers, Doyle also has a no-hitter to his name, which he threw last summer, and two playoff victories. He won game three of last year’s championship series.

With the deadline to sign fast approaching (the next hour, in fact), there’s still no word on whether Y-D’s Scott Green has inked a deal with the Boston Red Sox, who drafted him in the 15th round. If he doesn’t sign, he’ll head back to Kentucky and, based on his Cape summer, will be a much higher pick next year.

Y-D had a lot of veterans but also eight guys coming off their freshman seasons, most notbaly Grant Green and Sean Ochinko. You can bet a lot of those eight will be back next summer, keeping the tradition going.