Sachem North is back on the doorstep of a county title.<\/p>\n
Powered by senior righthander Sam Morreale\u2019s gutsy start, No. 4 Sachem\u00a0North earned a 2-1 road win over third-seeded Smithtown East in the Suffolk Class AAA baseball winner\u2019s bracket final Tuesday. Sachem North \u2013 seeking its first county title since 2011 \u2013 punched its second consecutive ticket to the county final.<\/p>\n
Morreale struck out five, walked two and allowed four hits and an earned run in six-plus innings. After he walked the leadoff man in the seventh inning, junior righthander Jacob Tonnies retired the next three batters for the save.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just pitching for strikes,\u201d Morreale said. \u201cI wasn\u2019t really (looking) for strikeouts. It’s really easy to pitch when I have the best defense in the county behind me, so I don’t have to worry about striking kids out because I know the defense has my back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sachem North (19-5) needs to win only one of a potential two games against either Smithtown East (20-4) or No. 1 Connetquot, which will host the Bulls in an elimination game at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, for the crown.<\/p>\n
Sachem North will face Wednesday\u2019s winner at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Middle Country Athletic Complex in Selden.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery team left is legit, so nothing’s going to be easy,\u201d Sachem North coach Tom Gambino said. \u201cThat’s what happens when you get down to this point. We’ll see what happens. We’re going to just keep doing what we do, and hopefully get a big hit when it counts at the end and we\u2019ll get it. But to say anything has been done yet would be foolish.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smithtown East had a runner on second with one out in the fifth inning, but Sachem North closed the inning with a chaotic 4-5-2-1-4 double play. Second baseman Jack Pitman fielded a grounder and, after seeing the runner who was on second round third, threw to third baseman Travis Szober. Szober started a rundown, which ended with Morreale tagging the runner at home. Morreale then fired to third base \u2013 covered by Pitman, who tagged the batter.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was kind of a momentum shift for us,\u201d Morreale said.<\/p>\n
Sachem North took a 2-0 lead in the third inning on RBI singles by Lucas Singleton and Kevin Lysohir. Smithtown East limited the damage in the inning as leftfielder Nicholas Piccoli threw out a runner at home and Tom Fanning, who allowed three hits and no runs in 4 1\/3 innings, entered in relief to strand the bases loaded with two outs.<\/p>\n
Smithtown East scored on Evan Schickler\u2019s fourth-inning sacrifice fly.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ll be fine,\u201d Bulls coach Rob Christensen said. \u201cWe just got to stay true to ourselves and play good baseball.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n\tBen Dickson joined Newsday\u2019s high school sports staff in 2023 after graduating\u00a0from Maryland, where he covered several of the Terrapins’\u00a0teams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sachem North is back on the doorstep of a county title. Powered by senior righthander Sam Morreale\u2019s gutsy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2288],"tags":[5,2368,2328,2304,4,2305,2303,16658,15851],"class_list":{"0":"post-59798","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb-postseason","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-hs-baseball","10":"tag-major-league-baseball-playoffs","11":"tag-major-league-baseball-postseason","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-mlb-playoffs","14":"tag-mlb-postseason","15":"tag-sachem-north","16":"tag-smithtown-east"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114582820361812988","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}