Pinch-hitter Banff’s two-run single highlights five-run inning that helps Woodstown dump Audubon to reach South Jersey Group I baseball title game
SOUTH JERSEY GROUP I PLAYOFFS
Friday’s Semifinals
(5) Woodstown 9, (1) Audubon 6
(2) Gloucester 5, (3) Pitman 4
Monday’s Championship
Woodstown (18-9) at Gloucester (21-7)
GROUP I SECTIONAL FINALS
Monday’s Games
North I: Pequannock (19-9) at Pompton Lakes (23-4)
North II: Dayton (16-11) at Brearley (17-8)
Central: Shore (16-8) at Point Pleasant Beach (23-4)
South: Woodstown (18-9) at Gloucester (21-7)
By Al Muskewitz
Riverview Sports News
AUDUBON — Mark Banff got called off the bench in the fourth inning of a tight game Friday. He was cold, but he had one job, and one job only.
As Woodstown’s most reliable pinch hitter it was his job to keep the line moving or, even better, deliver a hit to score a couple runs.
Banff came through as he often does, poking an opposite-field single to right that brought two runs home and gave the Wolverines the lead for good in an eventual 9-6 win over top-seeded Audubon in the South Jersey Group I baseball semifinals.
The fifth-seeded Wolverines (18-9) now travel to Gloucester (21-7) for the SJ title Monday. It’s their third trip to the sectional finals in the last four years.
Banff was summoned to hit for freshman second baseman Thomas Tucci with two on, two out and two already in. Rocco String and Caiden Spinelli drove runs home earlier in the inning to tie the game 2-2. Banff later scored from second when the Green Wave booted Jack Holladay’s grounder at short to make it 5-2.
“It’s a tough situation coming in, not really knowing a lot, not having any experience out there with an at bat, but to be able to deliver something like that, especially to change the whole complexion of the game, is a great feeling,” Banff said. “I’ve had a couple great moments in high school, but that might have been my favorite moment right there.”
Woodstown coach Marc DeCastro is a thinking-man’s manager. He doesn’t make a move that isn’t painstakingly researched and backed by megabytes of data and experiences. Banff was the right player at the right time and when he was called he was ready to go.
Banff has six hits this season. His first three hits were all pinch hits. On back-to-back days in late April, he delivered an RBI pinch double against Penns Grove and an RBI pinch single against Audubon. Two years ago in this round of the playoffs against Buena, he hit a three-run pinch homer.
“He’s our best pinch-hitter,” DeCastro said. “Throughout the year we give a lot of people, guys who aren’t every day players, different opportunities so that I can find out in these situations which ones are ready and which ones can do it.
“He has been a better hitter pinch-hitting than he has when he’s started games, so in that spot, you don’t know if you’re going to get another scoring opportunity and the game is obviously close so you want to take advantage of it, so we used our best pinch-hitter in that spot.”
With folks continuing to deliver from every spot in the lineup, the Wolverines extended their lead to 8-2 in the fifth on consecutive run-scoring hits by String, Blake Bialecki and Ty Coblentz. Audubon rallied in the bottom of the inning to make it 8-6, but the visitors never flinched.
“We had a lot of really big hits today,” DeCastro said. “We just put up nine and this team doesn’t let up nine very often. We had a lot of kids who were really, really big in pressure spots and that’s not something we used to do. Last game we won 1, 2, 3, 4 (in the lineup). Today it was all the way down. There were bit hits all the way through.”
DeCastro’s dynamics were at work again when he brought Jack Knorr in from left field to relieve Dante Holmes in the fifth. Although the senior lefthander gave up a bases-loaded walk, a run-scoring ground out and a two-run single, he buckled down with the tying run at the plate and ended the inning with a strikeout.
“He came in and needed to find a groove a little bit,” DeCastro said. “It’s a really difficult spot and I put him in a really hard spot. We had a lead, but he came off coming out of the game in the first inning after walking people (at Pennsville), coming into a pressure spot where you can’t walk people.
“What I was just looking for was does he settle in to who Jack is. After the two walks, even though they let up the hit – that was my fault, I called the wrong pitch on the 2-2 – after that I thought he was really good for the next four batters, I don’t care what happened, so I felt really comfortable with letting him ride.”
Knorr admitted he was “getting a little ahead of myself” when he first got on the mound, but once he settled in and found his command he was “good from there on.” He retired seven of the last eight hitters he faced after giving up the two-run single that got the Wave within two.
Holliday gave the Wolverines some more breathing room with an RBI single in the seventh to make it 9-6. Audubon’s leadoff man in the bottom of the inning, cleanup hitter Joseph Slavin, reached on an error and made it to second with two outs, but he was of little consequence as Knorr struck out the side behind him to end the game.
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