Aces expected to take center stage on Monday in GMC Tournament’s Round of 16

It’s widely accepted that the Greater Middlesex Conference baseball tournament is a two-pitcher tournament.

Besides the teams that threw everything at their play-in games, coaches will often throw their aces in the first round, go with their No. 2 or piece it together for the quarterfinals, leaving the calendar aligned to come back with their top arm in the Saturday semifinals – if they make it that far – and the championship game a week later.

And while there’s no pitcher consistently as dominant as Zack Konstantinovsky was over the last three years for North Brunswick – winner of the 2022 GMCT – there are plenty of high-quality arms set who will be on the bump Monday afternoon (and evening, in one case) in the Round of 16.

Jaxon Appelman of Edison, Justin Hascup of Old Bridge, Carter Cumiskey of Spotswood, and Eddy Nunez of Woodbridge are among the top GMC hurlers who’ll attempt to get their teams off on the right foot Monday.

The strength of those arms means every at bat will count. It’ll be quality over quantity, and timeliness.

This is just the first round, but consider this: in the last nine GMC tournament title games over the last ten years (there was none in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic) only two of the 18 teams have scored more than two runs in a game, and none have been decided by more than two runs.

Pitching wins, but timely hitting is critical.

Here’s a game-by-game look at Monday’s first round matchups in the GMC Tournament, with probable pitching matchups:

17-Perth Amboy (5-11) at 1-South Plainfield (15-3), 4 pm
Anthony Ortega (2-2, 2.63) vs. Aldo Pigna (4-0, 3.65)

The Panthers won their play-in round game Saturday afternoon, knocking off 16th-seed East Brunswick out of the Red Division 8-5. And they did it with some senior leadership, and a three-run rally in the top of the seventh. So, don’t count Perth Amboy out, even when they seem down. Head coach Damon Clark says Chris Aracena has been “Mr. Clutch” the last few weeks, and they may need that. Sebastian Aponte helped in a big way, too. He had a leadoff double to jump start that rally, and closed out the game on the mound, despite getting into a bases loaded jam after an erorr and a couple of walks.

Clark feels with Ortega on the mound, the Panthers can compete with anybody. But South Plainfield is well-tested. The Tigers are a gritty bunch. (Could you imagine them and Spotswood in a 1 vs. 4 semifinal Saturday?) But first things first. Starter Aldo Pigna has been very good for South Plainfield, which has won six straight against the Panthers, dating back to their meeting in the 2018 GMC Tournament final, which the Tigers won. Don’t let his mid-threes ERA fool you; of the 12 earned runs he’s given up all season, half came in an 8-6 win over South Brunswick. Take that game out, and his ERA is just 2.47 in four starts.

And they’re hot, having won nine straight, their only two conference losses coming by a run each to Monroe and East Brunswick, both by 3-2 scores. Senior Zack Robinson has been tearing the cover off the ball, hitting an eye-popping .466, and as a a team, they’ve hit nine home runs. And when you’ve scored the third most runs in the league, averaging 7.4 per game, that’s some good math in your favor.

South Plainfield is also the only GMC school not to lose a home game this season, a perfect 8-0 on their natural grass surface.

9-St. Thomas Aquinas (10-5) at 8-South Brunswick (9-10), 4:30 pm
Gavin Sansone (4-0, 0.95) vs. Ethan Fantel (0-0, 0.00, 2 app.) OR Aaron Perna (3-1, 2.55)

Talk about teams that don’t know each other: South Brunswick and St. Thomas Aquinas haven’t played each other in over a decade. Their last meeting came back on May of 2013, with the Vikings winning 8-3. So, there’s not a lot to go on here in terms of any recent history.

The only common opponent is Spotswood, which swept Aquinas 15-9 at home and 12-1 on the road to claim the GMC Blue Division title. South Brunswick fell to Spotswood 8-7 a couple of Sundays ago at the Autism Awareness Challenge, allowing the decisive run in the seventh-inning.

The Trojans are hitting .304 on the year, about 40 points higher than the Vikings. Senior Gavin Sansone is hitting .457 for St. Thomas with a team-leading 21 runs batted in, while freshman Nikash Patel has three homers and 14 RBIs. The likely starter, Sansone, has four starts in the year, and three have been shutouts – against JFK, Perth Amboy and South River. He fanned a season-high 14 against the Panthers, and has struck out 41 hitters this year, while issuing just seven walks.

South Brunswick doesn’t have anyone ripping the cover off the ball at the moment, but is a bit more balanced on the offensive side. Ethan Fantel – who could start – has been limited in his at bats this year, but is 7-for-11 with a .636 batting average. Among those who’ve played more regularly, Colin Perna – whose older brother Aaron also is an option to start Monday for first-year head coach Mike Pallitto – is hitting .326, tied for the team lead in RBIs with senior Daniel Kirk, who’s hitting .255 on the year. And here’s an example of quality over quantity: he’s got 14 hits on the year, all singles, but he’s driven in 11 runs.

12-Piscataway (9-7) at 5-Edison (11-6), 4 pm
Bobby Bressler (3-2, 0.27) vs. Jaxon Appelman (3-1, 1.27)

This may be the best game of the day: a couple of teams with similar records, two big schools, and two pitchers who are a threat to no-hit their opponent every time they take the mound.

We almost saw one a couple of weeks ago when Edison’s Jaxon Appelman hurled a no-no for 6 and 2/3 innings in a 4-0 home win over Middlesex on the red turf. He was dominant, striking out 17. Meanwhile, Bobby Bressler not only rebounded from a UCL injury last year to pitch this season, but he threw a no-hitter on April 16th, in a 5-0 win over South River, two days before Appelman nearly did it.

Central Jersey Sports Radio’s Mike Pavlichko will be at the Edison-Piscataway game with live updates and postgame reaction – presented by Sportsplex at Metuchen – here on cjsportsradio.com.

Edison has struggled a bit of late, dropping four of their last six, but they are coming off a non-conference win over Piscataway Saturday afternoon in a GMC crossover game, 10-2. That game was in Edison, and they’ll be back there again Monday. The Eagles have won three straight against the Chiefs, dating back to 2022.

Junior Anthony Calantoni is swinging it right now to the tune of a .472 batting average for Edison, while a trio of sophomores in Robert Roma (15 RBIs), Darren Tirado (12) and Connor Murphy (10) have done most of the offensive damage. Not to mention Appelman, who’s hitting .404 with five homers.

The Chiefs hit just .269 as a team, but are led at the plate by Bressler as well, hitting .525 with 14 runs batted in. He also leads the team with seven extra base hits, six of them doubles.

13-Middlesex (6-12) at 4-Spotswood (17-1-1), 4 pm
Chris Kozak (1-5, 5.37) vs. Carter Cumiskey (6-0, 0.21)

The Blue Jays have one of the youngest, more inexperienced teams they’ve had in quite some time. There’s talent, and head coach Justin Nastasi knows it, they just need some time to come around.

Middlesex won its play-in game Saturday, blanking 13-seed Metuchen 7-0 on an efficient four-hitter by starter Dylan Ianiero. It was his third start of the season, and – here’s one reason for Nastasi’s optimism – his second straight start allowing zero earned runs. He also had two shutout relief appearances in mid-April.

At the plate, the Jays are hitting just .244 as a team, but against Eddy Nunez of divisional foe Woodbridge, managed to score three runs, albeit in a 4-3 defeat. But guess what? In six starts, that’s the most Nunez has given up all year. He threw a shutout against Edison, allowed two runs – both unearned – against Colonia, and allowed one earned run each against Sayreville, East Brunswick and Perth Amboy.

Which now brings us to the starting pitcher Middlesex will face Monday in Carter Cumiskey. The Seton Hall commit has been lights out all year, and can get it done at the plate, too. He’s putting up Zack Konstantinovsky-like dominant numbers: in 33 1/3 innings pitched, he’s struck out 56 and walked just six. That’s 1.7 Ks per inning, and 1.3 walks per game. With a bat in his hand, he’s hitting an unheard of .516 with 28 runs batted in. Of his 32 hits, 12 have been for extra bases – six doubles and six home runs.

But it isn’t even all about Cumiskey. There’s junior Will Buchan hitting .381 with 25 rubs batted in, sophomore Ryan Orth hitting .367 with 21 RBIs, and Breckyn DeAngelis batting .343 with 17 RBIs. Spotswood has scored 178 runs this season in 19 games, more than anyone else in the GMC. They’ve scored at 54 runs total and at least 12 in each of their last four wins, two of them coming last week against St. Thomas Aquinas – the second-place team in the GMC Blue Division – to clinch the title for the Chargers.

14-St. Joseph (4-15) at 3-Old Bridge (15-3), 4 pm
Joseph Barca (0-3, 6.44) vs. Justin Hascup (4-1, 2.16) OR JT Meyer (4-1, 0.78)

The only thing we know for sure about this year’s GMC Tournament is that there will be at leasy one all-GMC quarterfinal; it’ll be one of these teams against the winner of North Brunswick-Monroe.

St. Joseph has struggled with a young ballclub this year, one whose experience will pay dividends down the road. Falcons head coach Mike Murray hopes that road begins Monday at Fred Cole Field against the Knights, who swept Joe’s two games this season, 4-0 on April 6th, and 5-0 on April 8th in the shadows of Route 9. But those are the Falcons’ only two whitewashes of the season, and they have been scoring more runs of late. In the first six games of the season, in which they went 1-5, they scored a grand total of nine runs. In their last six, also 1-5, they’ve scored almost three times as many – 31 runs – including an 11-9 slugfest loss at South Plainfield on Thursday, and a 10-0 play-in round win over 19-seed JP Stevens.

Joe’s helped itself out on Saturday by winning by the ten-run rule and getting a complete game shutout from freshman Luke Palermo in a 10-0 win over 19th-seed JP Stevens. That helps line up Joseph Barca to pitch Monday, and while he may have an ERA north of six, he’s also been hurt by a lack of offense, including a 4-0 loss to Old Bridge and an 11-1 loss at North Brunswick. But again, the lineup has been coming around. Two guys doing it all year – makes sense, they’re veterans – are Joseph Zammitti and Bobby Christensen. Zammitti is a senior who is hitting .421, and reached safely in seven of his last eight games, while Christensen leads the Falcons at the dish, hitting .442 with 11 RBIs, but most notably, all but ten of those runs batted in have come in the last nine games, dating back to a 10-3 loss to Union Catholic on April 21st.

Old Bridge was one of the favorites to win the Red this year, and was right there until getting swept a pair by South Plainfield two weeks ago, helping the Tigers to win the division and take the GMCT’s top seed. But that doesn’t mean they’re not one of the top teams. In fact, so good is their pitching, that while everyone else is going with their No. 1, coach Matt Donaghue still has to decide if he goes with 1a, 1b or 1c. Justin Hascup and JT Meyer are the most likely options at the moment. Frank Papeo had a short outing against Monroe last week, just five innings in a 1-0 win. Hascup has been working on short rest lately. Meyer might be the one to go, but honestly, throw a dart and any of the three would be a good choice.

In the seven-team Red Division, Old Bridge is just fifth in scoring at 4.2 runs a game. Then again, go back to the pitching. They’ve only allowed 58 runs in 18 games, nearly tops in the league. So, they don’t have to score a lot. The scary part is they can. Junior Akhil Penkala leads the team with a .366 batting average, and John Smith is right behind at .364 with 12 runs batted in, while Michael Altman has 11, and JT Meyer is hitting .286 with 10 RBIs.

In the last two seasons, Old Bridge has won three of four from St. Joe’s.

11-North Brunswick (5-10) at 6-Monroe (9-8), 4 pm
Kyle Anderson (2-2, 4.53) vs. Zack Wallace (4-0, 1.29)

The Raiders hit a bit of a rough stretch in mid-April, dropping five-in-a-row in a span of nine days, with losses to to two GMC division winners – Woodbridge in the White, South Plainfield in the red – as well as Scotch Plains-Fanwood in the Autism Awareness Challenge, and a pair to East Brunswick. But since then, they’ve won two of three, splitting a home-and-home with South Brunswick, and beating Trenton Friday by an 11-1 score.

Now they take on the Falcons Monday for the third time this year, a team they swept four games from last year – knocking them out in both the GMCT and Central Jersey Group 4 semifinals – and split with this year. He beat Monroe on April 8th 10-7, but hasn’t gotten a lot of run support this season. In three games he’s started that North Brunswick lost this year, one was a shutout, and they scored a combined three runs in the other two.

The Raiders aren’t a heavy-hitting team, only launching three home runs despite the short fences at North Brunswick Community Park. But Yomar Carreras can belt it. He’s always dangerous, hitting .487 with 15 runs batted in and three home runs. And he has 17 walks, so imagine the damage he could do if anyone bothered to throw him anything he could actually hit? The problem is, opposing teams know if they walk him, they have a much better shot at the rest of the lineup, hitting just .266 as a whole.

They’ll face a Monroe team that started the year 7-3, but has gone just 2-5 since. But in six conference games in that span, three have come against teams above them in the standings – two losses to Old Bridge and one to South Plainfield – and another seeded above them in the tournament, GMC White Division champion Woodbridge. Zack Wallace has the best ERA on the team at 1.29, and a really nice K-to-BB ratio, with 42 strikeouts and 17 walks in 32 2/3 innings pitched. The Falcons hit about as well as North Brunswick – two points higher at .268 – but are a little more balanced. Junior third-baseman Owen Judge is hitting .365 with 14 RBI’s to lead the team, while Harrison Lollin – who pitches and plays first base when he’s not on the mound – has 13 RBIs and a team-best five home runs on the year.

10-Sayreville (8-7) at 7-Colonia (11-4), 4 pm
Thomas Schlaline (1-4, 2.45) vs. Cory Pascarella (5-1, 0.55)

This is a nice game between two White Division opponents who come in on a couple of good winning streaks. Sayreville has won four straight, after a mini, three-game mid-April swoon in which they scored just two runs and were shut out twice. Colonia has won eight in a row, and 11 of 12 since getting out of the blocks slow with a pair of losses to eventual White champion Woodbridge and a third at Edison.

Senior Jake Romanello is stroking the ball to the tune of two team-bests, a .388 average and 19 RBIs, while junior Mike Robinson is right behind at .356 with 16 runs batted in. And their starting pitcher can hit, too. Thomas Schlaline is batting .319 with ten runs batted in. He’ll get the nod on the mound Monday, with a good ERA of well under three, but a 1-4 record, which can be deceiving. In those four defeats, the Bombers were anything but, managing just four runs, shutout once. And in only one of those losses did Schlaline give up more than two earned runs.

On the other hand, Colonia starter Cory Pascarella has been downright nasty. He has started five games, and has one relief appearance. In his first start, he allowed four runs, two earned, and since then has only allowed one unearned run in his next 22 and 1/3 innings of work. He’s not going to overpower hitters – with only 33 strikeouts on the season – but he gets outs, and shuts teams down. And he’s only a junior.

But again, we get back to run support. When you’re allowing practically nothing, you can get away with scoring one or two runs here or there. But the Patriots as a team are hitting just .218, the lowest team batting average of any of the 16 teams playing Monday. Sophomore Colin Kroner – a solid pitcher in his own right – is the only player on the team hitting above .300, checking in at .310, with a team-leading 13 runs batted in.

Colonia won both matchups this season, 11-2 and 1-0, while Sayreville won both meetings last year, 11-4 and 15-5.

18-South River (9-7) at 2-Woodbridge (14-3), 7 pm
James Zsorey (2-3, 3.80) vs. Eddy Nunez (5-0, 1.09)

South River had to throw its ace, Julius Rosado, on Saturday in a mild upset win 4-0 win over 15th-seed JFK, so the Rams won’t have him available Monday, nor would he get to go Wednesday if South River beats the Barrons and makes it to the quarterfinals. But one game at a time. And at least they’ll have him in the game in some capacity, because boy can he hit! Rosado is hitting .419, but slugging 1.047, with eight home runs, 19 runs batted in – and he has 19 walks to lead the team, too. James Zsorey, who will get the start Monday, is hitting next best at .358, and has driven in 13. On the mound, he’s been mostly a starter, but also has two relief appearances. His best outing came at North Plainfield on April 13th, striking out 12, walking one, allowing just two hits and one unearned run in a 10-1 win over the Canucks.

The Rams have won five straight heading into the GMCT first round, including their play-in win over the Mustangs. Two of those were via shutout, and they also beat Highland Park 15-1 to start that streak.

Woodbridge has been consistently good all season long, and South River may be a good draw for them. All three losses have come in GMC play, but two of them were “playing up,” losing 6-1 to South Plainfield and 11-8 to Monroe, both out of the GMC Red. Their other loss was a 4-3 defeat at the hands of Middlesex. This is a Barron squad that has lived up to the high expectations they had coming into the season, and they are expected to make deep runs in the county and state tournaments this year.

As a team, the Barrons are hitting .308, led by senior Drew Lukachyk, who’s hitting .500 with 16bruns batted in, six doubles, three triples, and a home run, the only one Woodbridge has hit all season. Senior Tim Diegnan is hitting .375, as is sophomore Xavier Diaz. Senior Shawn Kish is hitting .365. They’ve got guys who can connect up and down the lineup, and have scored more runs than anyone in the White or Red Divisions besides South Plainfield, 124 in 17 games, ten behind the Tigers, who have played one extra game.

And on the mound? Who else but Eddy Nunez. He’s one of three Barron pitchers with an ERA under two, and yet he’s the ace. Woodbridge is 6-0 in games he’s started, and he goes long, never lasting less than six innings in a game all year. In fact, he’s thrown two complete games – wins at Middlesex and Edison – while also going 6 and 2/3 in a 7-0 win at Edison, his only shutout of the season. Only once did he allow more than one unearned run. And here’s an interesting nugget: Nunez has not pitched at home since May 25th of last year, in a 3-2 win over Watchung Hills in the North 2, Group 4 quarterfinals. All six of his starts this year have been on the road.

There’s no familiarity between these teams, as their last meeting came before the COVID interruption, a 10-0 win for the Barrons in May of 2019. South River won their previous meeting, 7-2 in 2016. Both games were played at Woodbridge.

It’s also the only night game among the eight first round matchups Monday.