Unhittable from any distance

Penns Grove goes to 2-0 in pool play after Achillius Vong no-hits Pennsville, issue raised about mound distance from plate

DISTRICT 3 LL TOURNAMENT
Saturday’s game
Penns Grove 7, Pennsville 0
Sunday’s game
East Vineland 9, South Vineland 4
Monday’s games
Buena at Pennsville, 5:45 p.m.
North Vineland at Millville, 5:45 p.m.
West Cumberland at Elmer, 5:45 p.m.

By Al Muskewitz
Riverview Sports News

CARNEYS POINT — On Friday, Achillius Vong showed the way he can impact a game on the bases. On Saturday, he showed the other two elements of his game that justify Penns Grove All-Stars manager Steve Raymond calling him “our Shohei Ohtani.”

Vong delivered three hits at the plate, which was three more than he allowed on the mound as he spun his first career no-hitter in beating Pennsville 7-0 in the District 3 Little League Tournament at the Carneys Point Rec Center.

“You heard what we were calling him when he was on the mound,” Raymond said. “We were calling him ‘Shohei’ and he proved it today.”

“I think it’s really cool,” Vong said of the comparison to the Dodgers’ generational star. “I think it’s a huge compliment and it really makes my day. It brings my confidence up on the baseball diamond.”

Pitching for the first time in a couple weeks, the hard-throwing right-hander threw 69 pitches over six innings, faced one batter over the minimum and struck out 12. He never threw more than 15 pitches in any inning and covered the final four innings in 39 pitches, including just five in the fourth.

He only allowed three baserunners — a leadoff error in the first and a dropped third strike in the third who was swapped out by a fielder’s choice who was erased on an inning-ending double play.

“I felt really good, my arm was great, I haven’t pitched in a while,” Vong said. “Today I was really hitting my spots and I felt really good.

“(The no-hitter) feels really good because Pennsville’s our rival and it’s my first one ever – and it makes us big in the seeding.”

The win was Penns Grove’s second in 24 hours after not having won a district tournament game in 14 years. They sit atop the American Division at 2-0 with two games left in pool play. They can all but clinch a spot in the double-elimination finals with a win at Buena Tuesday that figures to be a bullpen game.

Pennsville hosts Buena on Monday in the rescheduling of Thursday’s washed-out tournament opener. 

Vong anticipated celebrating the gem with his teammates in a dogpile, but tripped himself coming off the mound after getting the final strikeout and landed in a heap in the infield.

The gem wasn’t without some controversy. Pennsville supporters questioned the distance between the mound and the plate during the game. Pennsville coach Zach Sedlack satisfied their curiosity and raised their ire by independently taking a tape measure to the mound after the game and found it to be 42 feet, 2 inches to the front of the plate — four feet short of Little League standards.

There was talk of a protest immediately upon that discovery and a lot of raised voices, but Little League Baseball has protocols in place for such action and the rules don’t allow for it after a game is completed. For it to come into play, Pennsville would have had to have acted on its suspicions at some point in the game and made its intentions known to the umpire before play continued. 

Pennsville manager Jay Weatherbee said he wasn’t aware if the issue until after the game, but would do “my due diligence and see if that was a legal game.”

Riverview Sports News has reached out to District 3 administrator Tom McCarville for clarification and is awaiting a response.

Pennsville sent three pitchers to the same mound. Starter Trey Sam went four innings and kept Penns Grove off the board in the first two. First reliever Pat Galloway threw a shutout inning in the fifth, getting out of a bases-loaded jam with an inning-ending double play.

“In the long run – I’ll play devil’s advocate here – we had our chance at throwing from shorter, too, and we still didn’t capitalize on it,” Weatherbee said. “Whether you move it back five feet, that kid’s a stud. It may not make a difference, but I have to do my due diligence as the coach.”

Raymond said the mound has been at the same distance “every game we’ve played here.” It is a temporary structure, however, removed as the field also is used for softball events such as last week’s East Coast Showcase. Saturday was the 12U all-stars’ final home of the baseball tournament season, so this mound is destined to “get put away in a crate.”

For his part, Vong said pitching from Saturday’s position felt “about the same” as throwing from other mounds in his experience.

It was the first district tournament game between the neighboring rivals since pool play in 2019.

Penns Grove took the lead with three runs in the third inning. Aiden Robertson had an RBI single and Lucas Ware and Vong delivered back-to-back RBI doubles. Nolan O’Brien’s two-run single made it 6-0 in the fourth and Tanner Raymond had an RBI single in the sixth.

Penns Grove pounded 10 hits in the game.

“The more comfortable they get, the better they’re going to hit,” Raymond said. “They hit, that’s what they do, the whole lineup hits. It’s just going to start happening more and more.”

O’Brien, who wears No. 13 for all-stars as an homage to two-way star Luke Pokrovsky on his dad’s Schalick baseball team, has three straight hits and four RBIs since striking out in his first tournament at-bat.

“I just think about going up there and hitting the ball hard,” he said. “My dad always tells me to do that and I keep that mentality going up to the plate.”

PENNS GROVE 7 PENNSVILLE 0
Penns Grove	003 301 0-	7	10	1
Pennsville	000 000 0-	0	0	3

District 3 standings

AMERICAN DIVISION		NATIONAL DIVISION
Penns Grove	2-0	East Vineland	2-0
Millville	1-0	South Vineland	1-1
Pennsville	0-1	Elmer	0-1
Buena	0-1	West Cumberland	0-1
North Vineland	0-1