Muhls have plenty of good things to remember about ’22 baseball season
Tough as the ending was, Brian Kopetsky will mostly remember the good moments from Muhlenberg’s baseball season, and there were a lot of them.
There was the Berks League championship run, culminating with an 11-3 win over Oley Valley at FirstEnergy Stadium.
| Berks championships | Total | Most recent |
| Gov. Mifflin | 14 | 2022 |
| Muhlenberg | 13 | 2021 |
| Wilson | 11 | 2019 |
| Boyertown | 9 | 2001 |
| Fleetwood | 6 | 2012 |
| Reading High | 4 | 2014 |
| Conrad Weiser | 3 | 2010 |
| Hamburg | 3 | 1989 |
| Kutztown | 3 | 1998 |
| Oley Valley | 3 | 2013 |
| Wyomissing | 3 | 1994 |
There was the 5-4 walk-off win against Boyertown . . . a 6-5 win at Conrad Weiser that saw the Muhls score six times in their final at-bat . . . and a back-and-forth 6-5 win over Wilson at Owls Field, the Muhls snapping the tie with a run in the top of the seventh.
There were 19 wins all told, including 10 straight to start the season, one of the best starts, and one of the longest winning streaks, in program history.
“This is going to be one of those groups that, when you’re looking back, (you’ll remember as) special,” said Kopetsky after completing his 24th season as Muhlenberg head coach.
The county championship was the second in four seasons and 13th in program history, one less than Gov. Mifflin, which has claimed a Berks-record 14 titles.
The Muhls returned seven starters from a team that reached the PIAA Tournament and expected to be good, and they were.
They lost just three times during the regular season, the first 12-4 at Gov. Mifflin — which was 13-0 at the time — the second at Donegal, which is still playing. (The Indians beat Ephrata Thursday to advance to the PIAA Class 5A semifinals.)
Muhlenberg also lost to Hamburg, 12-2, two days before the start of the Berks League playoffs, a game which Kopetsky used as a tune-up; he didn’t utilize his best pitchers.
They improved from 14-11 a year ago to 19-4.
“They put the time and effort in from the time they were freshmen till the time they were seniors: weight room, the gym, out on the field,” Kopetsky. “They were rewarded with all that hard work.”
It really showed up in the batter’s box where the Muhls rivaled Gov. Mifflin as the best-hitting team in the league.
They batted .329 as a team and averaged 7.6 runs per game. They were held to fewer than four runs just three times; they scored 10 or more runs seven times, including in the Berks semifinals and championship game.
The lineup included four .400 hitters — there were just 10 in the Berks League. All-Berks centerfielder Luis Beato led the way at .429, all-division shortstop Kenay Rodriguez hit .414, all-division first baseman Sam Martinez .409 and All-Berks third baseman Cameron Burr .400.
“When you’ve got four guys hitting .400, that’s a pretty special lineup,” Kopetsky said.
Beato was third in the Berks League in batting, second with a .714 slugging average, tied for fourth with 25 runs scored and tied for sixth with 20 RBIs.
Rodriguez was fifth in batting, scored 18 runs, had a 1.005 OPS and was and among the league leaders with 11 stolen bases.
Martinez was third in Berks with 25 RBIs, fourth with a .541 on-base percentage and seventh with a .606 slugging percentage.
Burr was 10th in the league in batting, second with a .543 on-base percentage, tied for fourth with 25 runs scored and tied for fourth with 13 stolen bases.
“We’ve got a bunch of great hitters,” All-Berks pitcher Brad Coley said after the Berks championship game. “I have confidence in every single slot in our lineup that they’re gonna get on.”
| Muhlenberg’s Berks titles |
| 2022 |
| 2018 |
| 1981 |
| 1980 |
| 1973 |
| 1972 |
| 1965 |
| 1958 |
| 1956 |
| 1955 |
| 1950 |
| 1947 |
| 1946 |
The Muhls had three All-Berks picks and four all-division picks, including right fielder Gio Cavanna and catcher Shane Rosenberry. Burr, Cavanna and Rosenberry each return next season, as do several other top pitchers. Rodriguez may apply to the PIAA to play another season.
Kopetsky, who has coached the Muhls for 24 seasons, said this lineup was as good as any he’s had. He compared it favorably to his 2018 squad, which went 20-3 and won a Berks League championship.
That team batted .324, averaged nearly eight runs per game and was led by Berks Player of the Year Sean Guilbe, who went on to professional baseball.
“This team’s more explosive,” Kopetsky said before the Muhls put up 30 runs over three Berks playoff games. “You get a guy on, you’ve got to worry about the speed; Burr, Kenay and Gio have speed. This group creates pressure top to bottom in a different way; that group physically would wear you out.”
The Muhls played in the two biggest games of the season: The Berks title game and the midseason clash against Mifflin April 25 at Gochnauer Field. They were the only unbeaten teams in District 3 at the time and each went on to earn a No. 1 seed for the tournament, the Mustangs in Class 6A, the Muhls in Class 5A.
The showdown came at a bad time for Muhlenberg, who had played three games in the prior four days, and they didn’t have Coley, their ace, available. Mifflin, with the league’s top winner, Alexander Velez, on the mound and Tyler Minick launching a pair of homers, won 12-4.
Five days after they won a league championship the Muhls’ season was over, the result of a stunning 8-7, 10-inning loss to 16th-seeded Gettysburg.
The Muhls rallied from a 7-4 deficit, tying the game with a run in the bottom of the seventh but were stung when they gave up an unearned run in the 10th. The game ended in controversy. Burr, the team’s hottest hitter in the postseason, swung and missed at what he — and everyone in the Muhls’ dugout — thought was the second strike.
He was called out and one of the best seasons in program history was history.
“It was a ‘Twilight Zone’ ending,” said Kopetsky, who said he was warned by the home plate umpire to tell his team to stop stealing signs, even though there is no PIAA rule against that.
“You want the kids to decide the game at the end, and there were three or four things that happened in the 10th inning . . . interpretations of the rules that you would find questionable,” Kopetsky said. “The stuff that happened in the 10th inning was surreal. The hard part is we all walked away (feeling) cheated.”
Despite that sour ending Kopetsky enjoyed the journey to get there.
“This was a great team to coach,” he said. “They were a fun bunch, they worked extremely hard, they were extremely tight.
“They had an amazing regular season. They put on one of the most impressive displays (in the league playoffs) that I’ve seen in the years that I’ve been coaching. They just steamrolled teams. They made a mark.”