Tornado
denied
Negley, 
By John Enrietto
Eagle Sports Editor
BUTLER TWP —
Win and get help
But first,
Cade Negley helped himself in scattering five hits in a
route-going pitching effort. He drove in the tying run and scored the winning
tally Tuesday night as the Golden Tornado baseball team edged
The win
ended
The Tornado
(10-5, 5-5) needed a win and a Tiger loss to enter postseason play.
“We could go
(14-5) and not be in the playoffs,”
The Tornado
close the season with four non-section games, as does Seneca Valley (5-11,
2-8), which lost for the ninth time in 11 games.
“We just
didn't get the big hit when we needed it,” SV coach Eric Semega
said. “This was good baseball tonight. Our kid pitched well and their kid
pitched well.”
The Raiders
forced Negley to throw 29 pitches in the first
inning, loading the bases on two walks and an infield single. Anthony Cinicola plated SV's lone run of
the game on a two-out slow roller to shortstop that he beat out for a hit.
Negley
threw only 55 pitches over the final six innings.
“I settled
down and did my thing,” he said. “They hit a couple of balls off the end of the
bat for the infield hits early.
“We hadn't
been scoring runs lately, but I felt like if we got a couple, we could hold
them off.”
Negley and
Jefferson Ford had two-out doubles in the first and second innings, but were
left stranded. Nicolas Kibbie reached on catcher's
interference in the third and wound up scoring on Negley's
sacrifice fly to right.
Kibbie
delivered a two-out double in the fifth, but was left on base. Negley walked with one out in the sixth and Connor Ollio doubled to deep left-center to plate the game-winning
run.
“I could see
it was going to be a curveball coming out of his hand,” Ollio
said. “I was thinking about the right-center gap, but he hung the pitch and I
took it to left-center.”
Semega
said the hanging curve was the only bad pitch Corey Laskey
threw all night. He threw just 83 pitches in six innings.
“It's
unfortunate that one pitch was the difference in the game,” Semega
said.
After the
rough first inning, Negley faced just two batters
over the minimum for the remainder of the game. Mike Collins had two of the
Raiders' five hits, all singles.
“That first
inning had to be frustrating for him, but Cade kept
it together,” Erdos said. “He gave us a total game
tonight, both on the mound and at the plate.
“We haven't
hit the ball well lately. Hitting can be such a mental thing ... Hopefully, this win tonight will get our bats going a little
bit.”
Semega is
hopeful of a strong finish for his team as well.
“We've got a
good nucleus coming back,” he said. “This group has to learn to do the little
things right so big things can happen. Hopefully we'll finish strong and take
that into next year.”
W:Cade Negley 7IP (6K, 3BB). L: Corey
Laskey 6IP (2K, 3BB).