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It took a tiebreaker to crack up the top three Zone 1 American Legion teams but pitching will determine the zone’s champion.
“We’re certainly going to have to get the kind of pitching we’ve gotten for most of the summer,” Old Town-Orono coach Dave Paul said, noting three of his starters have four wins or more to their credit with a staff earned run average just below 3.00.
“We’re going to have to get good pitching, be able to make the routine play defensively, and not give a team four or five outs an inning,” he said.
A three-way tie was broken by Bangor, Old Town-Orono and Trenton’s head-to-head records Wednesday, giving Trenton its first top seeding entering the tournament, just a year after the Acadians nabbed their first tourney berth since their Mount Desert Island days.
Bangor, last summer’s zone champion, finished second, and the 1995 state runner-up Twins took third, setting up today’s 4 p.m. tourney-opening game at Bangor’s Mansfield Stadium.
Trenton will play No. 4 Brewer, 40 minutes after the conclusion of the Comrades-Twins game.
The zone champion and runner-up will head to Augusta for the August 3-7 state tourney.
In a season with no gimme games, teams wishing to win the crown must put together a near-perfect streak of games.
Losing just three players from the 1995 roster, the Acadians just got stronger as the season progressed, picking up explosive hitting from the entire lineup and solid pitching from Aaron Brown, Matt McFarland and Dan Curtis.
“We actually, believe it or not, set first place as our goal,” coach Jack Merrill said. “We didn’t know if it was realistic but we had a good team coming back and some good pitching.
“The No. 1 seed is nice but it isn’t going to make the tournament any easier,” he said.
Bangor has the league’s premier pitcher in Josh Pressley, their 6-0, 1.03 ERA lefty from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. But Penobscot Valley Conference Class A pitcher of the year Darren Stover, and Hermon High’s Mark Alaimo also delivered big wins, including Alaimo’s well-pitched 5-4 win against Brewer Tuesday.
What concerns coach Steve Vanidestine the most is the team’s hitting.
“If we hit well, we play well,” he said. “I can’t explain that but we seem to do things well whenever we’re hitting well and running the bases the way we can.”
Matt Gilbert and Chris Soper were the Brewer workhorses, logging 33 innings each and combining for seven of the team’s 14 wins.
What Brewer does need is solid outings from Dennis Roy (2-1), and Mike Kane (1-2) to capture a state berth.
“I think the thing that is good for us right now is Dennis is coming back and Kane is throwing well now,” coach Dave Gonyar said. “If those two can do the job for us, it gives us some pitching depth.”
” is so close, you just don’t know when you’re going to use them,” Gonyar said. “Being nine-inning games, you’re not sure when you’ll use a guy.”
The Twins bring four years of state tournament experience to this year’s zone finals, and that’s what makes them so dangerous.
“We’re in the fortunate situation in the past three or four years that a lot of the kids have been through tournament baseball and hopefully that will make the difference in a couple of game,” Paul said. “Any of the four teams certainly have a shot at being one of the two teams going to the states.”
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