The 2021 Sayreville baseball team won the GMC Invitational. This year, they’ll be in the main bracket for the first time since 2019. (Source: Sayreville baseball on Instagram)
It’s been four years and three seasons since the Sayreville baseball team has made the GMC Championship Tournament, and coming off last season’s 8-16 campaign, losing a ton of pitching, veteran coach Mike Novak wasn’t exactly sure what to expect.
Let’s just say he’s been pleasantly surprised. The Bombers should at least be one of the top five seeds when the field is picked.
This year’s squad will be the GMC White Division champion, regardless of what happens Thursday against JP Stevens in the Bombers’ final game before Friday’s GMCT seeding meeting. And that’s a huge accomplishment.
Sayreville had won five straight before an 11-1 loss to Red Division opponent Monroe Wednesday night. In that stretch, they scored no fewer than six runs in any of the five games, scoring in double figures three times, and pitching one shutout.
The bats have done what Novak expected: hitting a bit over .300 and scoring seven runs a game, led by Jake Romanello and his .524 batting average, with eleven runs batted in.
It’s the pitching has been the difference, an X-factor for a team that graduated 92 innings pitched from a year ago, with just two hurlers – A.J. Zapoticzny and Aayush Mehta – who’d thrown more than ten innings during the year. Zapoticzny hasn’t thrown much, but Mehta has thrown 23 1/3 innings to a 0.60 ERA, while Thomas Schlaline has impressed, throwing 28 1/3 innings, with a 1.98 earned run average.
All that has helped the Bombers to an 11-4 record, 9-2 in the GMC White, good for at least a share of the division, though they have the tiebreaker with second-place Woodbridge, having swept the Barrons.
And that’s good enough to put them squarely in the GMC Championship bracket. The only question is how high they’ll get seeded after the parity-riddled Red Division gets its top few teams in.
Click below to hear Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko talk with Sayreville coach Mike Novak about the Bombers’ 2023 season:
Discover more from Central Jersey Sports Radio
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.