Westfield Blue falls to Scotch Plains

Westfield ran into a hot Scotch Plains team and lost 13-1 in a mercy rule shortened Babe Ruth tournament game. The loss drops Westfield to 13-4 overall and to 1-2 in the Babe Ruth tournament.

Westfield had defeated the same Scotch Plains’s team just a week earlier by the score of 3-1, but it was not Westfield’s day and the combination of bad bounces and defensive misplays put Westfield behind and they were not able to recover. Despite the lopsided score, Westfield got exceptional pitching from Vincent “Madman” Difilippo. Difilippo kept the Scotch Plains hitters off balance early by mixing in Eephus pitches along with very hard fastballs. He struck out 3 in the first two innings and was the victim of a couple of defensive misplays in the 2nd inning when Scotch Plains scored 2 runs one a single hit. Going into the bottom of the 3rd inning, Westfield trailed Scotch Plains by the score of 2-1, however Scotch Plains erupted for 11 runs in their at bat. Scotch Plains took advantage of a couple of very bad hops and a few Westfield errors on their way to the huge inning. Eric Varakian relieved Difilippo and record the final two outs in the 3rd to close out the inning

Scott Tupper made a great play in center field when he nearly made a running catch on a hard line drive to center field fence that just eluded his reach. Tupper tracked down the ball and fired it in to hold the batter to a single. Westfield only recorded 4 hits in the 4 inning contest. Two of those came of the bat of Chris Rinaldi who doubled to the center field wall in both at bats and the other two were hard hit singles from Tupper and Difilippo who both hit the ball hard in each of their at bats.

Next up is Hillsborough at 8pm tonight in the Cranford finals. Warm ups start at 7pm and the boys will wear their blue jerseys.