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Central Catholic Raiders Baseball '17

Sun, Jun 04, 2017 01:00 PM @ Neutral Location
Team 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Final
Central Catholic 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 3 0 4
St. John's 0 0 1 0 0 0 4 2 0 7

Central falls to St. John's Prep, drops to loser's bracket

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BROCKTON — The ride home had to be a strange one for the veterans on the Central Catholic baseball team.

Sure, the Raiders dropped a tough, 7-4, decision here to St. John's Prep before about 250 fans.

But unlike Division 1 North, where the cliche reigns and "There is no tomorrow," this is the Super 8, and there actually is.

The Prep won five straight a year ago after losing its opener and came within a whisker of the title, falling to Braintree, 3-2.

If Central wins five in a row now, they'll be ordering rings over on Hampshire Street.

"We were just talking about that, it's not over," said coach Marc Pelletier, whose Raiders are slated to face the winner of Monday night's Belmont/Braintree eliminator. "I won't call it a loser's bracket. It's the ‘other' bracket. And right now, we just have to be thinking of the next game."

Pelletier ran his prized lefty, the recently-named MVC Division 1 MVP, Steven Hajjar to the mound Sunday.

Hajjar battled all afternoon against a loaded Eagles' lineup, running out of steam in the seventh. He didn't help himself, making a costly throwing error and he didn't get much help either, leaving the mound down 5-1.

The southpaw went 6.1 innings, allowing four earned runs on eight hits with three walks. He fanned 10.

"It's not like we didn't battle," said Pelletier, whose club had back-to-back early squanders that were mighty costly. "We had the right guys at the plate at the right time."

Loading the bases with no out in the third and putting two on with one out in the fifth, Central came up empty and paid for it.

"Every time they took a lead, we kept fighting back," said Pelletier. "There's a lot of fight left in these tigers."

Hajjar drove a sac fly to tie things at 1-1 in the sixth. And down 5-1 in the eighth, the Raiders showed a little pop of their own.

First, Mike Pierro laced a bomb to left that easily cleared the wall 340 feet away.

Sean Thompson followed with a double and scored when Hajjar's sizzling two-hopper pinged off the shortstop into left field. Sophomore Mike Lefebre worked an epic 11-pitch walk and Jake Delaney followed with an RBI base hit.

Again, the story of the day for the 17-5 Raiders, though, they would strand the tying and lead runs at second and third.

St. John's-bound righty Sam Lara worked out of the jam in the seventh and pitched into the eighth, before Pelletier went to the early hook, with the next game squarely in mind.

Game Statistics:

Division 1A Semifinals

Central Catholic (4): Noah Lucier ss 5-0-1, Joseph Sanchez cf 5-0-0, Dom Keegan c 4-0-0, Mike Pierro rf 5-2-2, Sean Thompson lf 4-1-1, Steven Hajjar p/1b 3-1-3, Mike Borrelli dh 4-0-1, Mike LeFebre 3b 2-0-0, Jake Delaney 2b 3-0-1, Sam Lara 1b/p 0-0-0, Will Conaton p 0-0-0. Totals: 35-4-9

St. John's Prep (7): Jacob Bolger 2b 4-1-2, Tyler MacGregor 3b 5-2-2, Frank Diorio rf 5-0-3, Dan Frey cf 4-0-1, Andrew Selima 1b 4-0-0, Chris Francoeur ss 3-1-2, Christian Kukas dh 2-1-1, Josh Cerretani pr 0-1-0, Alex Lane c 2-0-0, Andrew Dembowski lf 4-1-2, Jake Sanderson p 0-0-0, Kevin Dewing p 0-0-0, Zach Begin p 0-0-0, Dan Regan p 0-0-0, Casey Bussone p 0-0-0. Totals: 33-7-13

RBI: CC — Pierro, Hajjar, Delaney; SJP — MacGregor 2, Diorio 2, Kukas

WP: Sanderson; LP: Hajjar

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