The Cape League’s Pointstreak scoreboard still has the third game of the championship series on the list and scheduled for Saturday night. It’s like a cruel tease while the withdrawal sets in . . .
The Yarmouth-Dennis pitching staff finished the playoffs with a 1.78 ERA and a batting average against of .188 – and those numbers include a game in which they gave up nine runs to Harwich. Take that game away, and the ERA stands at 1.00. Interestingly, while it may go down as one of the more dominant playoff pitching runs the league has ever seen, the 1.78 ERA isn’t even the best in the last four years. Harwich had a 1.71 ERA when it won the title in 2011. And going back to 2009, Bourne had a 1.38 playoff ERA when it won. Unsurprising moral of the story: if you have a playoff ERA under two, you’re probably going to win it all.
Kudos to the league on including Walker Buehler in the Playoff MVP award. While he only pitched in two of eight playoff games, his 0.00 ERA in 15.1 innings is remarkable and something that hasn’t been done in at least 15 years.
Splitting the award with Buehler was Y-D catcher Marcus Mastrobuoni, one of the most improbable CCBL Playoff MVPs in league history. Mastrobuoni plays for Division II Cal State Stanislaus, and he could very well be the first player from that school to play in the Cape League. He didn’t make his Cape League debut until July 24 and played in only five regular-season games. He wasn’t a full-time starter in the playoffs until Jesse Jenner broke a finger in the opening round. From that back story, Mastrobuoni hit .444 in the playoffs and drove in five of Y-D’s 10 runs in the championship series. He is the first player from a non-Division I school to win the Playoff MVP award since Kevin Hodge, a junior college player, won it in 1997 for Wareham.
The last three times Y-D won the title, its playoff MVP was a pitcher, and twice it was a closer. Joshua Faiola saved two playoff games on his way to the 2004 honor and David Robertson saved four playoff games (all the games Y-D won) to win top honors in 2006. I thought Phil Bickford might continue that trend with his three playoff saves, but it would have been hard to pick him over Mastrobuoni or Buehler.
Hunter Cole has played on two Cape Cod Baseball League championship clubs, but he’s never held the trophy. Cole played in 38 games for Cotuit last year and three in the playoffs before departing. Cotuit went on to the title. This year, after the former Georgia Bulldog was drafted in the 26th round, he came to Yarmouth and was one of the Red Sox’ best hitters before signing with the San Francisco Giants (he remained Y-D’s RBI leader through the end of the season). Cole was in Eugene, Ore., Friday night, playing for the Salem-Kaizer Volcanoes in the Northwest League, but he was watching.
Sidenote: anybody know a bookie who would take a bet on Salem-Kaizer winning the Northwest League title?
How about the summer Jordan Tarsovich had? He was a major key to success for the Red Sox, hitting .322 with three homers in the regular season. He hit .258 in the playoffs and broke open Friday’s game with a bases-loaded double.
Joey Armstrong was kind of on the other end of the spectrum during the regular season, finishing with a .157 batting average, but manager Scott Pickler stuck with him in the playoffs and Armstrong had two hits and an RBI in game one of the title series. Watching him in the championship, you wouldn’t have guessed he had struggled so much. He looked like a key cog.
Not a bad few months for Michael Donadio. Big East Freshman of the Year, Hamptons Collegiate Baseball League Batting Champion and MVP, and Cape Cod Baseball League champion.
Reinforcements like Donadio are always a key for successful Cape League teams, but it helps to have a core of mainstays too, and Y-D had that. Tarsovich, Andrew Stevenson, Rob Fonseca, A.J. Simcox, Josh Lester and Brennon Lund were in Friday’s starting lineup and were all with the team from the first week of the season on.
Stevenson deserves special mention in that department. He played in every single game for the Red Sox this summer, 44 in the regular season and eight in the playoffs. He also played in the All-Star Game, for good measure. He was zero for his first nine this season but ended up hitting .327.
That’s probably enough Y-D stuff and time to salute Falmouth, as well. The Commodores had a great summer, winning 26 games in the regular season for the second year in a row. It kind of felt like this year’s team was an extension of last year’s, with a lot of the same guys and the same feeling around the club, so this might mark the end of an era. The fact that it ended without a championship won’t change a lot of good memories for a lot of really good players.
Kevin Newman should have better memories than anyone. I imagine grounding into a series-ending double play on Friday won’t sit well, but it takes absolutely nothing away from his career. He’s a shoo-in for the Cape League Hall of Fame someday.
Thanks to everyone for reading this summer – and for bearing with me during wedding season. I’ll hopefully be doing some off-season stuff and come next June, we’ll be off and running again.
Finally, if you’ve ever wondered if players truly enjoy their time in the Cape League, you need only ask. Or, since it’s 2014, check Twitter. They had themselves a summer:
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