Westfield falls to Basking Ridge Tournament team

Basking Ridge’s Tournament team defeated Westfield 10-0 in a 4 inning, mercy rule shortened Cranford tournament contest.

Basking Ridge stifled the potent Westfield offense with a combination of accurate pitching and very strong defense. Westfield put the ball in play often and hit the ball extremely hard a few times, but each time Basking Ridge made the plays. Chris Rinaldi hit a hard line drive near the fence in left in the 1st inning, but it was right at the left fielder who was playing deep and made the play. In the 2nd inning, Vin Difilippo hit a laser to deep right center field, but the Basking Ridge right fielder who was also playing extremely deep, made a diving catch worthy of a Sportscenter Webgem to rob Vin of an extra base hit.

(Press play button in lower left hand corner of video frame below)


Despite the lopsided score, Westfield got strong pitching from Difilippo, Chris “Boots” Boutsikaris and Brett Robertshaw, but the defense committed 5 errors behind them and Basking Ridge capitalized with good base running and timely hitting. Difilippo left the game with Westfield down only 1-0 after pitching two solid innings (Tournament rules limited him to 2 innings due to his outstanding 4 inning performance in this past weekend’s Hazlet win). Boots took over in the 3rd and was throwing well, but Basking Ridge put the ball in play and Westfield was uncharacteristically sloppy in the field and the team committed 3 errors on the first 4 batters Boots faced. Brett Robertshaw was brought in to put out the fire and following a couple of walks, he retired 3 batters in a row (the last 2 on strikeouts). Basking Ridge continued to put the ball in play in the 4th and after a couple of hits and a couple of other batted balls that dropped in, Basking Ridge scored 4 runs pushing the score to a 10 run differential and the game was called.

Nick Mele was very strong behind the plate throwing out 2 attempted base stealers and Boots made a difficult over the shoulder catch on a pop in foul territory off of first base.

Next up is the semi final round of the Cranford tournament against a team that is still to be determined. The game is scheduled for 8pm and warm ups will start at 7:15. The boys will wear their blue jerseys.