Tag: Tim Ballard

by Mike Pavlichko

Sayreville, Middlesex square off Tuesday as Bombers, Blue Jays look to make inroads in highly competitive GMC White

The GMC Red Division is very good, and its winner will likely get the top seed in the GMC Tournament, which starts in just a couple of weeks. But the GMC White Division is a knock-down, drag-out battle, too, every time their teams take the field.

And you can expect much of the same on Tuesday afternoon when Sayreville (56-6) meets Middlesex (9-4) in a battle of two middle-of-the-pack teams in the White Division.

It’s a game you can hear on Central Jersey Sports Radio, with Mike Pavlichko and Alec Crouthamel on the call. Pregame is at 3:45; click here to listen.

The Bombers – who are 4-6 in the White and in 5th place, right behind the fourth-place Blue Jays (6-4) – snapped a three-game skid Sunday evening with a late game against Matawan at Trenton Thunder Ballpark. They won 11-8 in what was their second biggest offensive outburst of the season.

That’s a welcome sight for second-year head coach Tim Ballard, whose team is hitting just .200 through 12 games. And they’ve had many this year – some wins, some losses – that have been too close for comfort. On a mid-April three-game win streak, they beat Perth Amboy 4-3 and 4-2, then edged Jackson Liberty out of the Shore Conference, 5-4.

But they’ve also lost some close ones: 3-2 to North Brunswick, 2-0 to Spotswood, and a 4-2 decision at the hands of first-place St. Thomas Aquinas.

As for Middlesex, they’ve been hitting the ball well. The Jays – under first-year head coach Blaze Ianetti, who had been an assistant under previous coach Justin Nastasi – have a .340 team batting average and have scored almost twice as many runs (91) in 13 games as the Bombers have in a dozen (48).

They’ve also gotten really good pitching, with a team ERA of just 1.61, and only one pitcher who’s thrown at least nine innings this year with an ERA over three.

It’s also a series that’s been very even of late. Middlesex won three straight coming out of the missed COVID season of 2020, then split a pair in 2023 before Sayreville won both meetings last year, 4-3 and 7-2.

Click below for pregame interviews with both head coaches:

Middlesex head coach Blaze Iannetti
Sayreville head coach Tim Ballard
by Mike Pavlichko

Opening Day: Piscataway travels to No. 9 Sayreville as 2024 H.S. Baseball gets underway

UPDATE: Today’s game has been postponed due to rain. A make-up date has not yet been set.

Mother Nature was nice to high school baseball in New Jersey in 2023, relatively speaking.

If the forecast for this week holds, it might be in trouble from the start.

But like that old Saturday Evening Post cover by Norman Rockwell, everyone’s going to try and play Monday, if they can. After all, it’s Opening Day.

And as of now, the window to play looks like it’ll be right when first pitch is scheduled for the season-opening broadcast on Central Jersey Sports Radio, as Piscataway visits No. 9 Sayreville in a Greater Middlesex Conference crossover matchup.

Today’s Piscataway-Sayreville season opener is sponsored in part by Piscataway Township and the Office of Mayor Brian Wahler.

You can hear that game – weather permitting – with pregame at 3:45 and first pitch at 4, as Mike Pavlichko and Vin Ebenau call all the play-by-play. Click here to listen.

The Chiefs are coming off a 7-15 season that saw them go 4-9 in the GMC Blue Division, and last year on Opening Day, they took the Bombers to extra innings, falling in nine by a 7-3 score.

Piscataway didn’t lose a ton in terms of graduation. Michael Wojick (.365, 15 RBI) and Mahir Shah (.257, 23 RBI, 2 HR) will be the biggest pieces missing from the lineup, while Shah also pitched 35 innings, with an ERA under five.

The good news is, head coach Rob Stoddard will have two pitchers back who missed all of last season on the mound due to UCL injuries: Bobby Bressler and Kenny Barksdale. Bressler was able to play second base, but Barksdale was completely shut down. They were P’way’s aces in 2022, but it leaves Stoddard an interesting decision as to who will get the ball on Opening Day, with last year’s ace, Jaden Peace, also in the mix.

Piscataway head coach Rob Stoddard talks about the upcoming season and the matchup with Sayreville.

Meanwhile, the Bombers are playing their first season in two decades with a new head coach, as Bomber alum Tim Ballard comes over from JFK. Ballard played for Mike Novak at Sayreville, then went and played college ball at Monmouth. Now, he takes over for his former mentor, who retired at the end of last season.

Sayreville was 15-10 last year, and GMC White Champions with a division record of 10-2. They’ll return top hitter Jake Romanello, who batted .425 with 13 RBI as a junior last season, and Ballard plans to start junior Thomas Schlaline, who tossed 37 innings in 2023 to a 3.03 ERA, striking out 43 and walking 30.

Ballard having been a Bomber – and playing for the previous coach – means he won’t be reinventing the wheel, but he is excited about how his charges hit the weight room hard in the off-season, and he’s expecting a little more pop out of the bats this season.

Sayreville head coach Tim Ballard talks about the upcoming season and the matchup with Piscataway.
by Mike Pavlichko

JFK takes four-game win streak into Friday clash with Edison

The first four games didn’t produce the results the JFK baseball team wanted.

The next four did.

After starting 2023 with two straight losses, and a 1-3 record in their first four games, the Mustangs have won four straight.

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And while three of those wins came over teams below them in the GMC Blue Division standings, the resume also includes a 12-2 win over Sayreville, the first place team up in the White Division. That could help as a “quality” win, a win against a team “on the board,” when it comes time to seed the GMC Tournament.

Kennedy is led at the plate by senior Jeremy Ricourt, who’s tearing the cover off the ball with a .586 batting average and 14 runs batted in, while junior RJ Coleman is hitting .455 and has just a 0.47 ERA on the mound in 15 innings pitched spanning three appearances. His only earned run allowed came in a 4-3 loss at JP Stevens on opening day.

But now JFK puts its streak on the line against another team from a higher division, Edison – also out of the GMC White.

Head coach Tim Ballard has not shied away from playing tough opponents over the years. And they’ve even come up with some tournament upsets.

Two seasons ago, as the 16-seed in the Greater Middlesex Conference Tournament, they knocked off top-seed Monroe in the opening round. Then, last year, they pulled off a similar upset in the states. As the 15th-seed in Central Jersey Group 4, they knocked out second-seed Brick Memorial on the road.

https://www.edisonboysbaseball.com/

You can hear Friday’s game on Central Jersey Sports Radio, starting with pregame at 3:45, and first pitch between Edison and JFK at 4:00. Mike Pavlichko will call all the action; click here to listen

Click below to hear JFK head coach Tim Ballard talk about the Mustangs’ season and the matchup with Edison:

by Mike Pavlichko

AUDIO: JFK pulls off monumental upset, knocking off top-seed Monroe in GMC Tourney’s opening round

The JFK baseball team lost its first eight games of the season.

Clearly, that’s not the same team that knocked off the top seed in the GMC Tournament Saturday afternoon.

But the 16th-seeded Mustangs did indeed beat the Falcons Saturday, 5-4, on an RBI infield hit by Joshua O. Torres. (The Mustangs have two players named Josh Torres on the team.)

For Kennedy, it was reminiscient of a win earlier this week against in-town rival Woodbridge, where Torres also drove in the winning run, Ryan Samaroo, from second base with two outs.

Monroe jumped out to a 3-0 lead but JFK went ahead in the third with four runs. Three came on a bases clearing double by Samaroo, the O’Torres drove him in.

Monroe got the run back in the fourth, and the teams would battle into the seventh, when with two out, Torres played the hero again.

Click below to hear postgame reaction from JFK on the win:

JFK head coach Tim Ballard
JFK senior IF/C Michael Hein

The win pits Kennedy (7-10) against 9th-seed North Brunswick (14-7-1) in Tuesday’s 4pm quarterfinals at North Brunswick Community Park. The Raiders got past 8th-seed Metuchen Saturday 3-2, avenging a 4-1 loss to the Bulldogs Wednesday afternoon. That game will be broadcast on the King James Radio Network by Korbid Thompson.

COMPLETE FIRST-ROUND GMCT SCORES AND QUARTERFINAL SCHEDULE

Central Jersey Sports Radio will cover two other quarterfinal games, including the 4pm game between 4th-seed Middlesex and 5th-seed South Brunswick. CJSR will also broadcast 6th-seed Edison taking on 3rd-seed South Plainfield in a 7 pm quarterfinal.