[MAW] 9 Random Observations from Backyard Brawl

1.      A different kind of team win

Here is a non-rhetorical question. Can a team bat just three of their five players (which in MAW also means no designated hitter) in a win and that somehow also constitute a full team effort?

After Saturday’s Backyard Brawl tournament, the answer appears to be a resounding yes.

This offseason on the Drop Podcast, Devin Torres and Kenny Stengel told us that they felt comfortable using their four pitchers in any situation during a tournament. They also stated that the team was unlikely to ever bat more than four and would drop another player from the lineup if the situation called for it. On Saturday during the two-game tournament championship, the Elite made good on both of those promises. The result was a true but atypical full-team win.

ECE opted to bat three players in both championship games against the Aces, going with an abbreviated lineup of Rob “Wiffman” Piervinanzi, Torres, and Stengel. The move paid almost immediate dividends as the team jumped out to a quick 4-0 lead. When the Aces stormed back to cut the deficit to 4-3, Torres told Mike Weiner (who had not yet pitched in the tournament) to get ready to enter. After the Aces erased the lead completely, Devin – who threw 8 innings versus the Aces between the winners bracket final and that game – made the switch. Although Mike eventually allowed the game winning run, he gave his team a couple additional chances to push a run across and his 5th inning double gave ECE a significant scoring chance in their final at bats.

With the Aces having already seen Torres for eight innings and Gino Joseph having thrown two complete games earlier, ECE went to their only remaining fresh arm for the finals – Kenny Stengel. Stengel rose to the occasion, shutting down the Aces white-hot offense for 3+ innings before Teddy Drecher took him deep in the 4th.

ECE would erase the Ace’s temporary lead in the bottom half of the inning thanks to a 2-run triple from Torres. For the 5th, the Elite handed the ball to Joseph who made quick work of the Aces to pick up the save.

The champions made good use of their 5-man roster during the two-game set, even while going with a 3-man lineup.

2.      Clark does his best Cap impression

Three weeks after the New School Risers’ Dave Capobianco threw more than 30 innings for his team, the Stompers’ Brice Clark went on a similar Iron Man run at Backyard Brawl. Brice started all six of his team’s games, throwing just under 30 innings total. He led the Stompers to a third-place finish, picking up wins against the Dragons, Goon Squad, Yaks, and Shortballs along the way.

3.      Aces Wild?

For the second time this season, the Aces finished runner up at an MAW tournament. The Ridley Park teams sits at 5th in the point standings — one spot ahead of East Coast Elite and with only the open tournament winners ahead of them — and have elimination round wins over three tournament champions (Juggernauts, East Coast Elite, and NY Meats). Yet they currently find themselves on the outside-looking-in in for the Mid Atlantic Championship on September 11th. If the Aces do not emerge victorious in two weeks at Wiffle Bash — and they are definitely a threat to win that tournament as they are in any tournament that the enter — then they will most certainly be the favorites in the Wild Card tournament on September 4th. While no team wants to have to go the wild card route and play two weeks straight, the Aces are perhaps the best equipped to handle it given the relative durability of their three young arms.

4.      Good Stuff, Poor Results

A handful of pitchers flashed quality stuff on Saturday, only to exit the tournament with virtually nothing to show for it.

The poster boys for this might be the Great Lakes duo of Mike Hogan and Grant Miller. Hogan & Miller each allowed more than 5 runs to the Goon Squad in a pair of shutout losses. Hogan — one of the Kalamazoo Wiffle®Ball League’s best and most consistent pitchers for years now — had his better velocity with him but struggled to find the target at points and when he did, the Goon Squad was all over his clean ball offerings. Attempting to avoid a similar fate, Miller switched between clean and cut balls during his outing. Through the same combination of a some wildness and quality hitting from the Goon Squad, Miller didn’t get the results he was after. He looked good throwing both styles of balls, however. His cut ball slider had true plus movement and the Goon Squad commented that both the velocity and movement (almost a 12 to 6 break) on his clean ball was as good as they have faced.

Likewise, the New School Risers’ pitchers suffered an equally hard luck fate. Chris Owen is often plagued by wildness, but he was pounding the zone Saturday morning and nearly pitched his team passed Y2B in their opener. New teammate Ethan Winer nearly did the same, before losing — just as Owen had — on a tough luck extra-innings, automatic bases loaded situation. This outing came off an abbreviated outing in Massachusetts for East Coast Wiffle® two weeks earlier where he had good stuff but inconsistent command which led to some early fatigue. That wasn’t the case in York where he was around the zone most of the game and still looked strong into extras.

5.      Fink continues to rake

With every passing tournament it becomes more and more difficult to get the ball by the Goon Squad’s Andrius Fink.

The 2020 Mid Atlantic Rookie of the Year is not experiencing a sophomore slump in the least bit and has instead taken his offensive game to the next level. On Saturday, Fink was right on Mike Hogan, Tommy Loftus, and Grant Miller. Even when those pitchers managed to keep him off base, Fink still often put the ball in play and applied pressure on the defense to make a play. As the Riser’s Jerry Hill pointed out earlier this year, Fink almost never gives up an at bat. This past weekend, he constantly worked deep into counts and took his walks when given. Only Brice Clark was able to somewhat contain him and even then, Fink managed a single off the hard-throwing southpaw.

With how he hit at Backyard Brawl, it might be time to stop referring to Fink as one of the more overlooked great hitters around and just start calling him what he is — a great hitter, period.

6.      No shortage of offense

In a highly competitive, high stakes tournament that could be won in as few as four games, one might have expected pitching to dominate. Teams did not have to hold back on using certain pitchers early given the length of the tournament and with a very balanced field, scoreless extra-inning games appeared inevitable. The tournament appeared tailormade for many low-scoring, close games.

That did not turn out to be the case.

Not a single game reached extra innings without a score and only two games (both between the Risers and Y2B) were undecided after regulation. There were a fair number of shutouts as usual in MAW, but the winnings teams also found ways to push a couple or even a handful of runs across in regulation. Only two games — both with the Yaks’ Noah Silverman as the losing pitcher — ended on a 1-0 score. While nobody is going to confuse MAW for being an offensive-drive league still, Saturday’s tournament continued an upward trend of scoring in 2021 as more and more offenses appear to be catching up to the circuit’s quality pitching.

7.      A flair for the dramatic

It is almost uncanny how the Aces’ Dennis Donegan continues to come through in the big moments. Dennis picked up another walk off home run on Saturday, this one coming against the Dragons early in the day. Stretching back to last season, Donegan has at least a half-dozen game ending home runs to his name and continually finds a way to rise to the occasion.

The Stompers’ Sean Ryan has proven equally “clutch” this year and continued to be so on Saturday. Sean had the game-winner in an elimination game versus the Goon Squad and often has been the offensive difference-maker in the Stompers’ victories this season.

8.      More than just aces

The initial concept of the Aces was pitching-focused and centered on four of MAW/RPWL’s better young pitchers in Cam Farro, Noah Silverman, Gino Joseph, and Zane Johnston. Gino and Noah opted to go elsewhere before the season began and the Aces added Teddy Drecher to take their place. The roster shakeup did little to alter the fact that the Aces are stacked with quality pitching, but their bats remained a point of derision. Both players and pundits alike questioned the new team’s ability to consistently score runs. As the regular tournament season winds to a close, the Aces have proven that concern invalid. The team clearly possess the bats necessary to go with their impressive array of arms.

That was evident once again on Saturday. The Aces sandwiched a pair of 1-0 wins in between two victories where they scored 5 runs apiece. The two 5-run victories also carried slim margins (5-3 and 5-4, respectively), which has been their calling card this season. The Aces often seem to score just enough eke out a win, playing up or down to the offensive levels of their opponents. That’s likely just a coincidence. At the end of the day, the Aces are scoring runs thanks to their power-filled lineup, where any member of the team can hit a game-turning home run at any time. At Backyard Brawl, Donegan had yet another walk off, Farro hit several big home runs, Teddy put his team up briefly in the top of the 4th of the championship game, and Zane had the game-winner in the first of the two-game championship set.

9.      Difference maker

Several times during the Backyard Brawl, a non-playing observer remarked to me how much of a difference maker Wiffman is for the Elite. He’s right.

Of course, Wiffman’s prowess at the plate is no secret. His hitting game borders on the stuff of legend (if this were medieval times, minstrels would have written songs about it by now). However, the difference he makes on ECE was not as blatantly obvious before last Saturday. Wiffman missed three tournaments that East Coast Elite played in earlier this summer and while they did well in one, they struggled considerably in the other two. The one they played well in (Ridley Park back in May), ECE would have benefited from his bat in their 9-inning, automatic bases loaded semi-finals loss to the Aces. ECE has played well all year, but they were often one ingredient short of getting over the hump.

Wiffman got them over that hump last weekend as he came through on several occasions with big home runs, all of which stood up except for one (a home run early in the first game of the two-game championship). As a team, ECE has pitched well all year and gotten offensive contributions from every player, yet have still struggled to consistently break through to the later rounds. The team’s tournament victory was clearly an all-around effort, but it is hard to imagine it happening without Wiffman’s bat in the lineup providing a spark.