The Perry County Vets went wire-to-wire ... and clinched the regular-season East Shore Twilight title ... with two games to spare.
On July 14 Perry County received a forfeit from Susquehanna, lifting its record to 13-3 and points total to 26, five clear of Hummelstown.
With the win, the Vets received a first-round playoff bye and will have home field advantage throughout the postseason.
“(The forfeit) is a crappy way to clinch, but we’ll take it,” said Vet skipper Zach Rice, whose team will start the defense of its 2018 playoff championship on July 23 or 24, depending on the outcome of the best-of-three quarterfinal sets. “We wanted to play.”
No surprise there.
The Vets are functioning at a high level.
Following a head-scratching 3-2, ninth-inning, walk-off loss at Susquehanna on July 7, Perry County’s bats exploded in a 12-1 July 10 knockout of Lawnton.
Two nights later, on the road at West Hanover, the Vets collected a tidy 5-1 decision that gave them a season-sweep of the league’s third-place team.
Pitching has carried the Vets to the title.
In the loss at Susquehanna, the Vets wasted a sterling outing by Joey Hower. The right-hander went eight innings of four-hit, five-K ball, didn’t issue a walk and needed just 82 pitches. He gave up two runs, one earned, and left with the game tied 2-2.
Hower’s offense, stagnant after eight days off, was limited to six hits and left five runners on base, including three in the sixth.
“That was an ugly loss, spoiling a great outing by Joey,” Rice said. “We were flat. There was no energy.”
It took two innings, but the offensive juice was back in time for Lawnton.
The Vet packaged four hits, a walk and an error into a four-run third.
Perry County’s engine room, its three-four-five-six hitters, cranked up the power.
Jimmy Baum one-hopped a two-run double off the wall of the post office and Jared Frey doubled Baum home. Then, after Ryan Loper reached on an error, Nate Bream drilled a bad-hop single through third that plated Frey.
Loper’s bases-clearing, three-run double highlighted a four-run fourth and Rice’s leadoff double keyed a three-run sixth. Singles by Rice and Eric Colledge set up Baum’s RBI double in the sixth.
The 13-hit attack made things easy for starter Kyle Sayers, who tossed a tidy four-hitter with one walk and three Ks over six innings. Ronnie Neidigh worked a 1-2-3 seventh with two strikeouts.
That set up the showdown with West Hanover that featured Vet ace Eric Hockley facing off with Justin Cherry for the third time this season.
Hockley won the duel once again.
The crafty left-hander was nearly unhittable. He walked one in the first and another in the third, when West Hanover got to him for an unearned run. Hockley gave up leadoff singles in the fifth and sixth, then walked two batters in the seventh. In all, Hockley gave up the two hits and four walks, and struck out seven. He had 20 swing-and-miss strikes.
The Vets got him all the runs he needed on Neidigh’s clutch two-out, two-run single in the second. They added a run on Loper’s groundout in the sixth, then picked up insurance runs on Baum’s two-run single in the seventh.