Historic seeding

Salem CC pulls down No. 4 baseball tournament seed, first home playoff series since revival of the program

REGION 19 DIVISION III TOURNAMENT
Saturday’s Games
No. 8 Montgomery County (14-17) at No. 1 RCSJ-Gloucester (45-4)
No. 5 Middlesex (30-18) at No. 4 Salem (25-24)
No. 6 Camden (26-15) at No. 3 RCSJ-Cumberland (29-15)
No. 7 Northampton (21-18) at No. 2 Brookdale (35-8)

By Al Muskewitz
Riverview Sports News

CARNEYS POINT – In the end it was all about the numbers and the extra game made all the difference for the Salem CC baseball team.

The Mighty Oaks left last weekend’s series with the fourth-best record in region play, but because of a quirk in the schedule were uncertain where they’d fall in the Division III region tournament seedings.

The tournament committee made it easy, seeding straight down the line based on winning percentage regardless of the number of games played. It installed the Mighty Oaks as the No. 4 seed in the tournament, their first home playoff date since the revival of the program in 2019.

They will host fifth-seeded Middlesex (30-18) and open the tournament with a noon nine-inning doubleheader Saturday at the Carneys Point Rec Complex. A sweep sends them to the Final Four at Rutgers-Camden starting May 15, a split forces a decisive Game 3 Sunday at noon. The Mighty Oaks took two of three from the Colts in early April.

“It’s exciting,” Mighty Oaks coach John Holt said. “I wasn’t anticipating it. Now we just have to take advantage of it.”

“I’m just excited for John and his team that they earned the opportunity to host,” athletics director Bob Hughes said. “It’s a testament to the work John has done for the last several years and what the team did this year to be in a position to be in the top quadrant of the region. It’s a great thing for the institution. It’s another sign of the progress that’s been made in Salem athletics.”

The Mighty Oaks finished 25-24 overall and 18-13 in region play, the 31^st region game the result of unbalanced schedule created by two teams opting out of the master schedule after it had been established and agreed upon. 

They were alone with 18 wins, but among four teams with 13 losses. If the committee seeded off the 13 losses, the Mighty Oaks would have opened the tournament on the road.

“You hope you can control what you can control in the variables but at the end of the day when we didn’t get the job done this weekend we left it up to the committee to make the decision,” Holt said. “We were obviously worried about that, not sure what was going to happen.

“We won 18 games, there’s got to be something to be said about that.”

“Winning percentage is the top priority and we had the best winning percentage (among the 13-loss teams),” Hughes said. “Ultimately our winning percentage won out.”

Because they are the host team, the Mighty Oaks will be the home team in all the games played this weekend. They were 11-10 at home this season, 22-18 over the last two years. Last season they opened the playoffs on the road and lost the series to Northampton two games to one.

“I think we play better at home,” Holt said. “Home field advantage is a real thing in baseball. Our guys call it ‘The Treehouse’ for a reason; they feel a certain kind of way about where they play. Hopefully they’ll be excited to host a playoff game and have that little bit of extra energy because of it.”

Middlesex has won 30 games for the fourth year in a row. They have one of the top power pitchers in the country in right-hander Ryan Rzepinski (5-1, 4.20 ERA, 79Ks/45 IP). He beat the Mighty Oaks on April 5, fanning 10 over six innings. The Colts earned by fifth seed by virtue of their series win over Camden, the sixth seed. 

The Mighty Oaks will attack them with a lineup that includes the four Centurions – four batters with 100 career hits (Yen Rodriguez, Demetrius DeRamus, Matt Murphy and Angel Velez) – and the region’s second-leading RBI producer in Division III (Murphy) and the region leader in ERA (projected Game 2 starter Jared Vandersteur, 2.98)

“We’ve got to play better baseball than we’ve bene playing, bit I think these three days off is what we needed to kind of reset and get back at it,” Holt said.