Matt Cichocki of Bridgewater-Raritan hits a ground rule double in the fifth inning of a 4-2 win over Watchung Hills in the Somerset County Tournament on May 20, 2024. (Photo: Mike Pavlichko)
The Bridgewater-Raritan baseball team has had immense success over nearly two full seasons now.
They have been Skyland Conference champions two years running. But, boy would they love to erase the sting of a semifinal loss in last year’s Somerset County semifinals.
If this year’s Panthers have their way, that will all change sometime around 8:00 Friday night.
Armed – quite literally – with excellent pitching, including a stopper/closer who hasn’t involuntarily surrendered a walk all year, Bridgewater-Raritan is all ready to go.
They’ll need to be Friday night when the top-seeded Panthers (24-3) take on the red-hot third-seed in the Ridge Red Devils (20-7) in the 50th Somerset County Tournament championship game at TD Bank Park in Bridgewater.
You can hear all the action on Central Jersey Sports Radio – presented by Zoned Sports Academy in Bridgewater – with pregame starting at 5:40 pm and first pitch set for 6:00 from the home of the Somerset Patriots. Mike Pavlichko and Vin Ebenau will be on the call; click here to listen.
The Panthers have been the top team in the Skyland Conference Delaware Division all year. The first 20-game winner in the league – and, of course, Somerset County – the Panthers’ losses have all been out of league: to Howell, Lawrence and West Morris.
They are a veteran group, that more often gets the timely hit and has stellar starting pitching, plus a closer in Cory Rible who locked down Watchung Hills in the semifinals.
He came into Monday’s semifinal game with the bases loaded and one out in the fourth. He got back-to-back strikeouts to end the inning, struck out the side in the fifth, went 1-2-3 in the sixth, and after a one-out single, induced a game-ending double-play in the seventh with the tying run at the plate.
Of course, none of it happens without the big solo homer to lead off the fifth by Matt Fattore, his first home run of the year.
In Ridge, however, the Red Devils will face a team that has scored ten or more runs in four of its last five games, and has scored 27 in two not-even-full Somerset County Tournament games. (Monday’s semifinal was a five-inning, ten-run rule game.)
That’s a big swing from when they started the year 1-4, and their average of 4.3 runs a game through their first 19, the Red Devils are averaging 9.8 runs a game in their last eight.
Click below to hear Bridgewater-Raritan head coach Max Newill talk about the Somerset County Tournament championship game against Ridge:
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